Europe | In the time of schism

Ukraine’s Orthodox Church moves closer to autonomy

Russia’s president is furious

A dwindling Russian World
|MOSCOW

VLADIMIR PUTIN often repeats the claim that Russia and Ukraine are “one people”. Yet by annexing Crimea and waging war in eastern Ukraine, he has pushed his neighbours ever farther away. Perhaps nothing symbolises this movement more vividly than Ukraine’s campaign for an independent Orthodox church, which came closer to becoming reality last week after Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, the “first among equals” in the eastern Christian world, signalled his support. The Russian Orthodox Church responded by severing ties with Constantinople, warning of a historic schism.

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Although the theological debate may be arcane, the secular stakes are huge. The only Orthodox church with international legitimacy on Ukrainian territory owes its allegiance to the Moscow Patriarchate, which is led by Patriarch Kirill, a close ally of Mr Putin’s. As Russia’s war with Ukraine drags into its fifth year, many Ukrainians see a fully independent national church as an essential means of breaking from Moscow’s orbit. Ukraine’s president, Petro Poroshenko, calls it part of Ukraine’s westward integration. The Kremlin sees it as a challenge to Mr Putin’s concept of a “Russian World”, united by common Orthodox roots, encompassing Ukraine and Belarus.

Ukraine’s campaign for autocephaly has been building steadily for months. On October 11th, Patriarch Bartholomew rehabilitated Filaret Denysenko, a bishop who broke with Moscow’s authority just after the Soviet collapse to create a self-styled Kiev Patriarchate, and Makariy Maletich, head of a smaller independent Orthodox body in Ukraine. The Patriarchate of Constantinople also withdrew the 1686 decision that gave Moscow some authority over the metropolitan see of Kiev, signalling that Constantinople does not regard Ukraine as Moscow’s canonical territory.

For Russia’s leadership, both religious and secular, the decision in Constantinople amounted to a grave breach of canon law. Mr Putin huddled with his Security Council to discuss it on October 14th. The next day, the Russian Orthodox Church decided to sever ties with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, though it stopped short of encouraging other Orthodox churches to do so too. Instead it encouraged them to press Bartholomew to reconsider. The Moscow Patriarchate announced that its believers would face punishment for praying in churches belonging to Constantinople, including Mount Athos in Greece, now a popular pilgrimage site for the Russian elite.

Among secular observers, one of the greatest worries is that a change in Ukraine’s religious regime could lead to physical altercations over control of the country’s places of worship, which include some of the most magnificent cathedrals and monasteries in the Christian east, in Kiev in particular. Mr Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said that Russia would “protect the interests of Orthodox Christians” just as it had always protected the interests of Russian-speakers—language echoing that used ahead of the annexation of Crimea. Believers throughout the world ought to offer a prayer for peace.

This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline "In the time of schism"

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