A group of Orthodox clergy who established a new Constantinople-aligned religious community in Lithuania have received an award from US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Gintaras Songaila, one of the Orthodox priests who were defrocked by the Moscow Patriarchate and reinstated by the Patriarch of Constantinople, collected the award during the International Religious Freedom Awards ceremony in Washington, DC, on Thursday.
“After their Moscow-aligned churches in Lithuania and Belarus defrocked them for defiantly condemning Russia’s war against Ukraine, these 9 Orthodox clergy established a new religious community in Lithuania where Orthodox believers, refugees and others can freely express themselves and their faith,” the US embassy in Vilnius posted on Facebook on Friday.
The US Department of State says on its website that it awarded the group of nine Orthodox clergy from Lithuania “in recognition of their courage and commitment to promoting and defending religious freedom globally”.
Songaila and four other clergymen were accused of canonical offences and defrocked by the Moscow-aligned Lithuanian Orthodox Archdiocese in 2022. However, Constantinople ruled that the clergy were removed for their stance on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, rather than for violating church rules.
The clergy initiated an Orthodox community independent of Moscow. The new community, which is subordinate to the Patriarchate of Constantinople, currently comprises ten clergymen and ten congregations across Lithuania.
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