Ukrainians who have fled the war to Lithuania cannot pray in the Church led by the pro-war Patriarch Kirill, Speaker of the Seimas Viktorija Čmilytė-Nielsen has said.
On Wednesday, she thanked Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, who is visiting Lithuania, for backing and reinstating five Lithuanian Orthodox priests who disagreed with the Moscow patriarch’s stance.
“I would like to take this opportunity to thank His Holiness and the Ecumenical Patriarchate for upholding the appeal of the five priests defrocked by the Moscow Patriarchate, reinstating them and welcoming them into the mother Church and allowing them to celebrate the Eucharist again. I see this step as historical justice restored,” Čmilytė-Nielsen told a conference on intercultural and religious dialogue at the Seimas on Wednesday.
In her words, this decision gives hope not only to the mentioned priests but also to the faithful, especially because the Orthodox community in Lithuania has grown with the arrival of over 70,000 Ukrainians.
“They cannot pray in the Church led by Kirill, who supports the war in Ukraine,” the Seimas speaker said. “The Orthodox community in Lithuania is also growing because of Belarusians who have fled repressions, and also Russians who have taken refuge in Vilnius to escape the Kremlin’s repressions.”
“We must ensure that Lithuanian Orthodox Christians of all nationalities have the opportunity to practice their faith without conflict with their conscience,” she stressed.
Čmilytė-Nielsen noted that Orthodox Christians living in Lithuania considered Constantinople to be their mother Church from the XIII century until 1686.
“It was part of the Metropolis of Kyiv that was subordinate to the Ecumenical Patriarch. And only later, as Russia’s power expanded and grew, did it become subordinate to the Moscow Patriarchate,” she said.
The visit of Bartholomew I follows his patriarchate’s decision to reinstate the five Lithuanian Orthodox priests defrocked by Metropolitan Innokentiy of the Lithuanian Orthodox Church, who is subordinate to the Patriarchate of Moscow.
The priests criticised the Orthodox Church in Lithuania for its failure to distance itself from Moscow Patriarch Kirill, who supports the war in Ukraine.
The Archdiocese of Lithuanian Orthodox Christians says it does not recognise the patriarch of Constantinople’s decision to reinstate the five priests.
The five priests hope that the Patriarchate of Constantinople will soon establish a permanent ecclesiastical structure under its authority in Lithuania. However, no decision has yet been taken on this issue.
For its part, the Lithuanian Orthodox Church seeks greater autonomy and says it has gotten closer to becoming an independent Church as the Holy Synod of the Moscow Patriarchate has referred its request to the Council of Bishops for consideration.
Orthodox Christians in Lithuania are considered one of nine traditional religious communities.
Responsibility of Russian Church
According to Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, the Russian Church shares responsibility for war crimes in Ukraine.
“The Church and the state leadership in Russia cooperated in the crime of aggression and shared the responsibility for the resulting crimes, such as the shocking abduction of Ukrainian children,” the patriarch told a conference on intercultural and religious dialogue at the Seimas on Wednesday.
“They have provoked enormous suffering not only to Ukrainian people but also to the Russians who count more than 100,000 casualties and responsibility for terrible atrocities,” he added.
According to the patriarch, the government in Russia has been trying to instrumentalise religion and use it for their own ends since the Tsarist times, and this is still being done now with the Kremlin regime promoting the “Russian world” ideology.
“Of special importance in this respect is the pan-Slavism, the ideology according to which all Slavs will be united under Moscow’s leadership. This 19th-century deeply racist ideology found its religious expression in ethnophyletism condemned as heresy by Constantinople in 1872,” Bartholomew I said.
According to the patriarch, recent decades have shown that hopes that economic globalisation will unite people on a cultural and spiritual basis and lead to world peace have not come true. Religion has become marginalised and used for geopolitical and political goals.
Ukraine will need not only major physical but also spiritual post-war reconstruction, he stressed.
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