Patriarch Kirill: Church Mustn’t Segregate on Basis of Vaccination

Pravoslavie ^ | 12/22/21

[marshmallow]

Regardless of what happens in society, the Church must never become a place that is segregated based on vaccination status, the Russian Patriarch told the clergy of Moscow yesterday.

The annual diocesan meeting of the clergy of the city of Moscow was held under the chairmanship of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill yesterday.

Many are concerned about the topic of vaccination and there are strong disagreements about both it in society and in the Church, the Patriarch noted. Speaking for himself, he said: “This is a purely medical issue, a matter of personal choice and responsibility,” reminding the clergy that he has been vaccinated.

Pat. Kirill was vaccinated in March. Though the Church has never officially revealed which of the Russian vaccines he received, various outlets have reported, with reference to sources close to the Patriarch, that he received either EpiVacCorona or CoviVac.

However, “even if the entire world becomes an arena of segregation on the basis of immunity, the Church must remain free from such segregation and accept all people who are seeking Christ,” His Holiness emphasized.

Other hierarchs from around the world have made similar statements. In March of this year, His Eminence Archbishop Mark of Philadelphia (Orthodox Church in America) issued a directive to his parishes insisting that vaccination status cannot become a prerequisite for participation in the life of the Church.”

[circlecity]

Well, it seems the Eastern Orthodox Church is much more concerned with the Gospel of Christ than the Romans are. Much more.

[JoanSmith]

This is appropriate. However Pat Kirill and Met Hilarion both need to repent of the judgement that those who are unvaxxed are sinning. They don’t know what it is they are advising. Lord have mercy.

[tlozo]

it seems the Eastern Orthodox Church is much more concerned with the Gospel of Christ

How exactly is the Moscow Patriarch following the Gospel, when Moscow Patriarch Kirill supports Putin's 7 year war against fellow Orthodox Ukrainians?

This was revealed during the battle of Ilovaisk in August that year. This was one of the bloodiest battles of the war in Donbas, during which the Russian army appears to have intervened in Ukraine. But, instead of calling for peace – which might have been a useful workaround for him – Kirill issued a statement attacking Ukrainian “Uniates and raskolniks” (schismatics) for engaging in conflict against his flock. He made direct reference to Orthodox and Greek-Orthodox Ukrainians who do not recognise the authority of the Moscow Patriarchate.

Soon afterwards, the Russian patriarch proceeded to publicly extol the virtues of “Russkii mir” – “the Russian world”, a concept that the Russian media and political class have made use of to justify Russian political, military, and ecclesiastical activity in Ukraine. He declared that: “Russia belongs to a civilisation that is wider than the Russian Federation. We call this civilisation the Russian world. This is not the world of the Russian Federation, nor Russian empire. The Russian world starts at the Kievan baptismal font. Russian, Ukrainians, Belarusians belong to it.” During a crucial battle for Donetsk airport in late 2014, Kirill all but broke with whatever ambiguity remained by decorating the heads of Russia’s two leading state-owned television channels with church orders. The official reason was for their services to church and state. But the channels had been instrumental in broadcasting inflammatory propaganda that fuelled the war in Ukraine. Kirill had clearly chosen a side, even if he had initially intended to avoid doing so.

The church’s position was not confined to the high rhetoric of the patriarch, but was also reflected on the ground in eastern Ukraine. There, some representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine rose to prominence in supporting the insurgents. One local priest from Sloviansk became notorious for his mix of religion, poetry, and geopolitical activism. He wrote poems professing his “love for the great Russian soldier, ready to die for his Motherland, and defend her from monsters like NATO and other predatory terrorists!” Another activist, a former sacristan of Kyiv Pechersk Lavra – the Kyiv monastery of caves – organised the war’s first ambush of Ukrainian intelligence operatives, in early April 2014. And, in one episode in Kyiv-controlled eastern Ukraine, two priests belonging to the Russian patriarchate refused to conduct services for a deceased child who had not been baptised in a church recognised by Moscow. While this was not necessarily the case in every location, in a country at war, just a few such incidents polarised society even further and massively undermined the standing of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine. Trust levels in Kirill fell across Ukraine, from around 40 percent in 2013 to 15 percent in 2018. And, in the same period, the number of Ukrainians who declared themselves members of the Moscow Patriarchate church fell from 19 percent to 12 percent. Those who claimed Kyivan Patriarchate membership rose from 18 percent to 28 percent.

/////https://ecfr.eu/publication/defender_of_the_faith_how_ukraines_orthodox_split_threatens_russia/

[MDLION]

“Well, it seems the Eastern Orthodox Church is much more concerned with the Gospel of Christ than the Romans are. Much more.”

May “seem” that way but that doesn’t mean it is. I’ve freely gone into Catholic Churches in the Archdiocese of Louisville the entire plague. No card asked for.