At World Council of Church buildings gathering, Russian church retains its membership

(RNS) — After a generally tense week that included passionate exchanges, the eleventh meeting of the World Council of Church buildings authorised a press release on 8 September concerning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that denounces the warfare however doesn’t single out the chief of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, who has been broadly criticized for supporting the invasion.

The statement condemned “this unlawful and unjustifiable warfare,” and particularly rejected “any misuse of spiritual language and authority to justify armed aggression and hatred,” whereas calling on all events to chorus from army motion across the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.

However the doc produced by the meeting, assembly in Karlsruhe, Germany, is unlikely to fulfill critics who in current months have referred to as for the group’s management to strip the Russian church of its membership within the ecumenical physique.

Moscow’s patriarch has already been sanctioned by the United Kingdom due to his rhetoric. The European Union additionally mentioned related sanctions, however they had been reportedly deserted after Viktor Orbán, the prime minister of Hungary and an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, intervened.

Kirill has spent years outlining what’s broadly seen because the non secular basis for the invasion, inserting a spiritual justification for reclaiming Russia’s sphere of affect in Ukraine and elsewhere with references to “Holy Rus” or “Russian world.” Earlier this yr, a whole bunch of Orthodox theologians and students declared the concept a heresy.

At an opening press convention on Aug. 31, outgoing WCC Common Secretary Ioan Sauca, a Romanian Orthodox priest, introduced the group’s central committee had rejected efforts by critics to expel the Russian church earlier this yr.

“The WCC is a free house for dialogue, and we come collectively not as a result of we agree with each other however as a result of we disagree,” stated Sauca, saying the proposal to expel the Russians was unanimously defeated.

Sauca stated he and others had visited Ukraine this yr and that observer representatives of Ukraine can be current for the meeting. However within the days that adopted, any hope of brokering formal dialogue between the Ukrainians and ROC members throughout the proceedings appeared to dissipate.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier addressed the meeting Aug. 31, singling out the Russians in his remarks. He famous that whereas plenty of Russian Orthodox monks have spoken out in opposition to the warfare and faced legal action for it, church leaders have actively supported the Russian authorities’s army actions.

“The heads of the Russian Orthodox Church are at present main their members and their complete church down a harmful and certainly blasphemous path that goes in opposition to all that they imagine,” stated Steinmeier.

“We have now to talk out, additionally right here on this room, on this meeting, in opposition to this propaganda focusing on the liberty and rights of the residents of one other nation, this nationalism, which arbitrarily claims {that a} dictatorship’s imperial goals of hegemony are God’s will,” the president stated.

Acknowledging Russian Orthodox delegates within the room, Steinmeier requested that different meeting attendees “to not spare them the reality about this brutal warfare and the criticism of the position of their church leaders.”

In his personal deal with on 2 September, Archbishop Yevstratiy of Chernihiv and Nizhyn of the unbiased Orthodox Church of Ukraine accused Russian troopers of atrocities. Two weeks into the warfare, he stated, troops opened hearth on unarmed civilians manning a checkpoint simply exterior of the village of Yasnohorodka, killing an area parish priest who had raised his cross as he tried to guard civilians.

“Right now, Ukrainians are those attacked by robbers,” Yevstratiy stated in his condemnation, invoking the biblical parable of the Good Samaritan. “Don’t move by our struggling and our ache, because the priest and the Levite of the parable!”

Yevstratiy thanked WCC members for talking out in opposition to Kirill’s assist for the warfare and really useful that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which declared itself independent of Moscow in 2018, be granted full WCC membership.

Tensions flared once more days later when the proposed assertion on the invasion of Ukraine was launched to the meeting. Roman Sigov, who recognized himself as a part of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church observer delegation, stepped to the microphone, urging WCC leaders to answer his group’s submitted feedback. (Leaders in the end accommodated solely two minor wording modifications within the closing doc.)

“I can not specific how a lot it hurts to listen to a press release which treats the sufferer and the aggressor in the identical manner,” Sigov stated. He additionally accused Russian prelates current of supporting the warfare and, in a single case, sharing movies on social media mocking Ukrainian prisoners.

“Allow us to hear the voice of Ukrainians when speaking in regards to the warfare in Ukraine,” he stated, noting that unbiased Ukrainian churchmen, not like Russian Orthodox leaders, lacked official illustration on the meeting.

The Russian Orthodox had been additionally crucial of the assertion. One Russian delegate, Archimandrite Philaret Bulekov, dismissed it as a part of an “data warfare” and derisively likened it to anti-war statements from McDonald’s and Starbucks, saying it could occupy “the identical degree of significance.”

He referred to as the German president’s speech “pathetic” and alleged that Steinmeier bore “private duty” for the Ukraine invasion.

After Bulekov completed, a youth observer representing the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, Oleksandra Kovalenko, referred to as on members of the Russian delegation to lift their blue voting playing cards in the event that they opposed the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In keeping with one attendee, no blue playing cards had been raised.

“It is vitally unhappy that you simply in contrast the blood of Ukrainian folks to Starbucks and McDonald’s,” stated Kovalenko to applause from many within the chamber.

Pressed by journalists at a closing press convention, members of the WCC central committee acknowledged Ukrainian and Russian Orthodox delegations didn’t formally meet throughout the meeting. Metropolitan Nifon of Târgoviște, a Romanian Orthodox priest who’s vice moderator of the WCC committee, stated members of the 2 sides might have talked informally and “exchanged some views.” Formal dialogue, he stated, stays a purpose.

“For folks to come back to the desk, it takes a variety of footwork within the background,” stated Agnes Abuom, moderator of the WCC Central Committee representing the Anglican Church of Kenya. “That should proceed to occur so that there will likely be belief, the willingness to come back to the desk and dialogue.”

Mary Ann Swenson, a United Methodist Bishop from the U.S. and a vice moderator of the central committee, expressed hope for such talks. “We actually did do some breaking down of partitions in a variety of methods,” she stated.

As necessary at this stage, she stated, was ensuring others heard the tales of these ravaged by the continuing warfare. “I might additionally say {that a} vital factor was that different folks in all the different components of the world received a deeper and higher understanding of what individuals are actually dwelling with in that area, to listen to among the struggles from all the folks in that area. That may make a distinction sooner or later.”

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