It’s not just a war in the trenches of Ukraine, it’s a battle for the hearts and minds of people of the post Soviet world. Moscow made it ideological, and it is determined to win it against the Rome-supported Greek Orthodox Patriarch.
It usually happens in post-Soviet Russia. One runs into the sanctification of a war of aggression by Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, as well as into the improbable portrayal of the autocratic Putin government as defending the freedom of the pro-Russian Church in Ukraine. Yet it remains surprising that foreign intelligence services would publish an official message accusing Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople of being an “incarnate demon” and an “antichrist.”
The theology of the Russian foreign intelligence services
On the state news agency TASS (January 12), a note appeared from the foreign intelligence services accusing Patriarch Bartholomew of having dismembered Ukrainian Orthodoxy and of continuing his dangerous schismatic activities.
“Now he has set his murky gaze on the Baltic states. This demonic incarnation is obsessed with the idea of ousting Russian Orthodoxy from the Baltic states, replacing it with church structures entirely under the control of the Phanar. In this, he enjoys the full support of the British intelligence services, which actively fuel Russophobic sentiments in European countries. At their instigation, Bartholomew, mired in the mortal sin of schism, has found common ground with the authorities of the Baltic states in an attempt to sow discord in the Russian Orthodox world. Relying on ideological allies such as local nationalists and neo-Nazis, he is trying to tear the Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian Orthodox Churches away from the Patriarchate of Moscow, drawing their priests and faithful into puppet structures artificially created by Constantinople.”
Our readers know the situation in Lithuania (here), Latvia (here), and Estonia (here). But the Russian intelligence services also look further south: “To strike at the stubborn Serbian Orthodox Church, (Bartholomew) intends to grant autocephaly to the uncanonical Montenegrin Orthodox Church.”
On January 13, the Ecumenical Patriarchate responded: “The Mother Church of Constantinople — mother also of the Russian Church — expresses its deep sorrow for the new Russian attack against His Holiness the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, launched on this occasion by the state services of the country […]. The Mother Church has refrained from commenting on countless similar attacks … and does so today as well […]. Fantastical scenarios, false news, insults, and fabricated information of every kind from propagandists do not deter the Ecumenical Patriarchate from continuing its ministry and its ecumenical mission.”
Also in Moldova and Bosnia-Herzegovina
Perhaps in their zeal, the foreign intelligence services failed to notice that the pro-Russian Church is also under pressure in Moldova (see SettimanaNews) and that it even happened in Bosnia-Herzegovina that the former head of the Islamic community, Mustafa Cerić, expressed hope for the formation of a national Orthodox Church, independent from the Serbian Orthodox Church, immediately denied by the Serbian bishops operating in the region. Bishop Photius of Zvornik-Tuzla and Bishop Sergius of Bihać-Petrovica and Rmanj spoke of a “phantom creation” and a dangerous provocation.
