{"id":16482,"date":"2023-03-27T13:03:52","date_gmt":"2023-03-27T12:03:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/?p=16482"},"modified":"2023-03-27T13:03:52","modified_gmt":"2023-03-27T12:03:52","slug":"ideology-fueling-ukraine-war-is-hurting-orthodox-unity-says-patriarch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/ideology-fueling-ukraine-war-is-hurting-orthodox-unity-says-patriarch\/","title":{"rendered":"Ideology fueling Ukraine war is hurting Orthodox unity, says patriarch"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

16.12.2022<\/p>\n

Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew calls out Moscow Patriarch Kirill’s support of Putin’s world vision.<\/p>\n

The ideology known as the \u201cRussian World,\u201d embraced by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Patriarch of Moscow Kirill, is driving a wedge between the Orthodox Christian world, said Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I \u2013 a wedge that has serious consequences for Church and society globally.<\/p>\n

Bartholomew, Archbishop of Constantinople, criticized the president of Russia and the Patriarch of Moscow during a speech at an international meeting dealing with policy issues. The meeting, hosted by the \u201cWorld Policy Conference \u2013 For a Reasonably Open World,\u201d took place in Abu Dhabi.<\/p>\n

Patriarch Bartholomew, who holds a place of honor among the world\u2019s Orthodox primates, called Putin\u2019s war in Ukraine an \u201cunjust aggression\u201d which \u201cconstitutes the worst European geopolitical and humanitarian crisis since the end of the Second World War.\u201d<\/p>\n

His speech last week took aim at the ideology known as the Russian World, or Russkiy Mir, which, according to a declaration drafted by the Orthodox Christian Studies Center at Fordham University, states that there is a \u201ctransnational Russian sphere or civilization, called Holy Russia or \u2018Holy Rus,\u2019 which includes Russia, Ukraine and Belarus (and sometimes Moldova and Kazakhstan), as well as ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking people throughout the world. It holds that this \u2018Russian world\u2019 has a common political center (Moscow), a common spiritual center (Kyiv as the \u2018mother of all Rus\u2019), a common language (Russian), a common Church (the Russian Orthodox Church, Moscow Patriarchate), and a common patriarch (the Patriarch of Moscow), who works in \u2018symphony\u2019 with a common president\/national leader (Putin) to govern this Russian world, as well as upholding a common distinctive spirituality, morality, and culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not the first time<\/p>\n

But the ideology is not the first time Russian thought has presented problems, Bartholomew said. Even in the 19th century, Moscow instrumentalized religion and developed an \u201cideology of Pan-Slavism\u201d as an organ of Russian foreign policy. That ideology acquired a religious component, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the idea that churches should organize themselves according to the principle of ethnicity, the central marker of which would be language,\u201d the Ecumenical Patriarch said. \u201cIt is this approach that the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople denounced in 1872 as heresy (the heresy of ethnophyletism, a form of ecclesial racism). It is in flagrant contradiction with the universalism of the Gospel message, as well as the principle of territorial governance which defines the organization of our Church.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, this \u201cheresy\u201d was useful to Moscow\u2019s objectives since it distanced Slavic-speaking believers from the influence of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, said Bartholomew. \u201cThe aim of this strategy was to create, within the Ottoman Empire, and later in the form of an independent state, a separate political force, at the service of the Russian thrust towards the warm seas,\u201d he said, in an apparent reference to campaigns under Peter the Great and Catherine the Great to expand Russia to the Black Sea.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

By John Burger.<\/p>\n

Read the article on Aleteia<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

16.12.2022 Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew calls out Moscow Patriarch Kirill’s support of Putin’s world vision. The ideology known as the \u201cRussian World,\u201d embraced by Russian President Vladimir Putin and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[153],"class_list":["post-16482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-press-review","tag-153"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16482\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldpolicyconference.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}