Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), Kirill, he is a key pillar and staunch defender of the system created by the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and now a candidate for sanctions by the European Union (EU) for his support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“We do not want to fight with anyone, Russia has never attacked anyone. It is wonderful that a powerful and great country has not attacked anyone, it has only defended its borders“, Said the Orthodox hierarch in full swing of the military campaign in the Ukrainian territory.
Kirill, whose father allegedly baptized Putin’s, has all the ballots to become the first head of a Church with tens of millions of parishioners subjected to international sanctions.
“The Patriarch personally made the decision to be one of the ideologues of the political system created by Putin,” theologian Sergei Chapnin, who worked for fifteen years for the Moscow Patriarchate, told Efe.
Kirill in Moscow, in 2019. Photo Reuters
support for Russia
In his opinion, Kirill has become one of his main allies of the head of the Kremlin “to the point of justifying the war in Ukraine.”
He, like Putin, also sees Ukraine and Belarus as Brother countries” that they should have remained under the rule of Moscow, and not as different nations.
The patriarch has multiplied declarations of support for the Russian offensive in Ukraine. The European Commission wants to sanction him, which it has already done with Putin and several Russian officials.
On February 27, three days after the start of hostilities, Kirill had described “forces of evil” critics of Russian ambitions in the neighboring country. In April, he called on Russians to “stand together” to fight “enemies without and within.”
“I would like to remind the authors of the sanctions initiatives that the Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia Kirill comes from a family that for decades was persecuted for her faith during the belligerent communist heresy”stated Vladimir Legoida, one of the spokesmen for the IOR, on his Telegram channel.
He added that “the history of the Orthodox Church must be totally ignored in order to try to intimidate its clergy and its believers with inclusion on certain lists.”
Born on December 26, 1946 with the secular name of Vladimir Gundyayev, Kirill was enthroned in 2009.
His career has not been without its scandals: in 1997, when he was then Metropolitan of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, the Moskovski Komsomoletsk newspaper published an article about the license granted to the IOR to import tobacco and alcohol duty-free, in which called Kirill the “metropolitan of tobacco”.
With Pope Francis in Havana, in 2016. AP Photo
The future patriarch did not file a lawsuit against the newspaper or against the journalist to avoid, according to Metropolitan Iliarion, then bishop of Vienna and Austria, a scandal that would further damage the Church.
Duty-free importation of tobacco and alcohol was a privilege granted to the IOR by the government of the first president of post-Vietnam Russia, Boris Yeltsin, to compensate him for the losses he suffered during the communist periodfrom which numerous intermediaries ultimately benefited.
The critics
A gift, a wristwatch that he had received a few years ago, put Kirill back in the spotlight of the press in 2009 for reasons other than religious.
During a pastoral visit to Ukraine the local press revealed that it was a Breguet It costs a whopping $30,000.
Kirill, who took vows of poverty when he took the monk’s robes, insisted that the photo published by the Ukrainian press was staged and that with his clothes he cannot wear a wristwatch during religious services.
But the same image, with the clock in question, was published on the official website of the Moscow Patriarchate.
As soon as the photograph was spread, it was withdrawn by the administrators of the page.
The controversy might not have gone any further if it had not been for the fact that they published the image again, this time retouched: without the clock, but its reflection was clearly observed in the varnish from the table where the patriarch rested his arm.
Last year, Putin, who confesses to being an Orthodox believer, imposed on Kirill the order of Saint Andrew, the highest distinction in the country.
“We are aware that we live in a happy country (…). Today Russia advances along its historical path with a great reserve of solidity,” said the head of the IOR when thanking the distinction.
Kirill has never stinted in praising Putin: in 2012 he called Putin’s election a “miracle of God” and the president himself as “the only defender of Christianity in the world.”
Unlike his grandfather, a priest victim of Stalinist repression, Kirill — his civil name is Vladimir Gundiayev — found his place in the apparatus of the Church in Soviet times, subjected to the regime.
In 1965, at the age of 19, he entered the seminary in his hometown of Leningrad (today Saint Petersburg) and he becomes a monk four years later.
He accesses his first diplomatic post since 1971 and in 1989 directs the department of foreign relations, equivalent to a Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
This race has fueled suspicions of close ties to the KGB, the secret services, who relied on the ecclesial institution to spy on the faithful.
Source: EFE and AFP
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