“I tell you before God, Putin does not order me”

Patriarch Kirill (Gundyaev), head of the Russian Orthodox Church, said after the liturgy in a monastery in the Moscow region that he does not receive orders from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

After the beginning of the February invasion of Ukraine, the hierarch and the Russian Orthodox Church were actively criticized for merging with the authorities, in several countries of Eastern Europe and the Baltics, this led to increased state pressure on local Orthodox churches within the Russian Orthodox Church.

“Some of our opponents, pointing the finger, say that the patriarch is there – he, as they say, acts on the orders of the president. I tell you before God: the president has never given orders to the patriarch, he never gives them,” TASS quotes the cleric. — And I am confident, as an Orthodox believer, a churched person, that he will not give.

According to Kirill, in Russia, “a symphony has been formed” in the relations between secular and church authorities. He believes that it was “dreamed of in Byzantium, but there it was hindered by the fact that the emperors considered themselves the head of the church – from these words it follows that their authority was opposed by Kirill to the secular character of Putin’s authority.

The prelate called the situation in Russia contrary to the movement of apostasy from God in the world. In his opinion, Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church are “a very special island of freedom.”

Kirill is actively criticized in Western countries for statements that can be regarded as support or justification for the war in Ukraine. The Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church de jure is not the head of the church, but it is perceived as such in the public mind.

In May 2022, the head of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis, said in an interview with the Italian newspaper Coriera della Sera that Kirill justified the war in a conversation with him, “talking about the flight time of NATO missiles.”

The answer to Kirill’s words, as the Pope says, were his words: “Brother, we are not state officials, we cannot use the language of politics, only the language of Jesus. For this, we must seek ways of peace.” According to the Pope, the patriarch “cannot turn into Putin’s altar boy.”