Russia's attack on Ukraine is intertwined with a religious conflict between the Orthodox

If the Russian attack on Ukraine sometimes seems like an intractable religious war, it is partly intertwined with a bitter war between Orthodox sects for control within the Orthodox community that has been raging for years, says David Ignatius, writer for the Washington Post.

He explained in

that this inter-communal battle has elements of a family feud.

The Russian Orthodox Church was founded in Kyiv in 988, then moved to Moscow, which has asserted its dominance ever since.

And when some Orthodox in the post-2015 Kyiv protests sought status independent of Moscow (in church terminology known as “independence” or “rationalism”), Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow rejected the offer.

Hegemony from Moscow pushed by Putin

The writer said that the majority of the Orthodox denominations in the world complain that the Moscow Patriarchate is aggressively seeking hegemony under the impetus of President Vladimir Putin and Patriarch Kirill.

He pointed out that Putin participated in the religious rivalry by publishing a famous article last July, describing that article as laying the emotional foundation for the invasion of Russia, as it focused on asserting that Ukraine and Russia are “linked together” by their common Russian Orthodox faith, and denouncing the Ukrainians The "independent minded" who he said "blatantly interfered in the life of the church, which led to the division of the followers of the church."

The article added that Kirill supported Putin's article.

But leaders of other Orthodox denominations strongly opposed the article.

The Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, who oversees the legacy of Byzantium from his seat in what is now Istanbul, has voiced his opposition.

Tensions escalate

According to the writer, tensions escalated after Bartholomew tried to reconcile in what was meant to be a global gathering of believers at a "holy and great council" on the island of Crete in 2016. But Kirill boycotted the meeting.

In 2018, Bartholomew agreed to officially recognize the independence of the Ukrainian Church from Moscow, and Kirill broke off relations with him, and in fact denied his primacy in the ecclesiastical order relative to the Orthodox world, and this was a schism.

Noting that Catholic Pope Francesco himself intervened in this inter-communal battle last Tuesday, Kirill strongly warned that he should not be "a boy to Putin's altar."

The Pope told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera that he advised Kirill in a conversation on March 16 via Zoom, saying to him, "We are not clergy in the state, we cannot use the language of politics but the language of Jesus."

“We think of Putin as a secular, autocratic leader,” the writer said, noting that he is an Orthodox believer who wears the cross that his mother secretly gave him as a child in Soviet times.

cold religious war

He added that Moscow's pressure for control in recent years has taken on aspects of the religious Cold War.

Russian and Eastern Orthodox bishops fought for control of churches in Africa, Korea, Singapore and elsewhere.

Kirill established a Moscow church in Africa to replace the Patriarch of Alexandria loyal to the Eastern Church.

The article concluded that Anthony J.

Limberakis, head of the congregation in America, told him that the Russian Orthodox Church was trying to replace the ancient sovereignty of Constantinople, now embodied by Bartholomew, adding that Moscow's goal was "to use the Orthodox Church as a political tool for Russian nationalism and expansion."