Russian Orthodox Cleric Says Papal Remarks on Kirill ‘Not Useful’ for Christian Unity

Crux ^ | 9/14/22 | Elise Ann Allen

[marshmallow]

ROME – One of the Russian Orthodox Church’s top-ranking clerics has said Pope Francis’s remark earlier this year that their patriarch shouldn’t be a government “altar boy” hurt efforts toward building Christian unity.

Speaking to journalists just after concluding a private conversation with Pope Francis on the margins of a high-profile interfaith summit in Kazakhstan, Russian Orthodox Metropolitan Anthony Sevryuk of Volokolamsk described the conversation as “very cordial.”

The two discussed the presence of the Russian Orthodox community in Kazakhstan, as well as the need to arrange a second meeting between Pope Francis and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, after the Vatican pulled the plug on a scheduled encounter over the summer.

Kirill and Francis were scheduled to meet in Jerusalem in June, however, the Vatican cancelled the meeting shortly beforehand due to the diplomatic fallout it would have created given Kirill’s vocal support of the war, which he has defended on religious grounds as an opposition to western secularism.

Kirill was also on the original list of attendees of the VII Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions in Nur-Sultan but backed out at the last minute.

Pope Francis is visiting Kazakhstan, which shares a lengthy border with Russia, Sept. 13-15 to attend the congress, and to meet with the country’s small Catholic minority.

[Greetings_Puny_Humans]

Kirill isn’t just a “government altar boy,” he’s a “former” KGB agent who spread Liberation Theology while on the board of the World Council of Churches, not too different from Pope Frankie, another Marxist.

[chajin]

But Krill helps with your blood circulation—oh wait a minute...

Kiril is a thank-God-for-small-favors situation: he would not be your first, second, or tenth choice for a Christian leader, but he’s better than anything coming out of Iran or Vatican City, so you take what you can get and leave it up to God.

[crz]

To understand positions of the Russian Orthodox Church in regs to the Russian government you need to look back at its history.

[lump in the melting pot]

Pope Francis’s remark earlier this year that their patriarch shouldn’t be a government “altar boy”

That's unusual, I actually agree with Francis on something. Personally, I would have phrased it as 'putin's bitch' but 'government altar boy' is kind of the same thing, in russia

[tlozo]

Pope Francis

"God is peace. He guides us always in the way of peace, never that of war," Francis said, speaking at a huge round table in the Independence Palace, a massive modern structure made of steel and glass in the capital of the former Soviet republic.

"Let us commit ourselves, then, even more to insisting on the need for resolving conflicts not by the inconclusive means of power, with arms and threats, but by the only means blessed by heaven and worthy of man: encounter, dialog and patient negotiations," he said.

The pope, who earlier this year said Kirill could not be Russian President Vladimir Putin's "altar boy," told the conference: "The sacred must never be a prop for power, nor power a prop for the sacred!"

Kirill has given enthusiastic backing to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which the patriarch views as a bulwark against a West he calls decadent.

[foundedonpurpose]

Francis is an embarrassment to the Catholic Church.

[KOZ.]

The Russian Orthodox church is demonic.

[Timber Rattler]

'nuff said.

[FarCenter]

Christian unity? They haven’t been unified since 1054.