"Let those who want to pray be allowed to pray in what they consider their church" Pope Francis said.

None of the warring parties have heeded the Pope's pleas for the war to cease.

Praying is never evil

"I continue to follow with sorrow the fighting in Ukraine and the Russian Federation. And in thinking about the laws recently adopted in Ukraine, I fear for the freedom of those who pray" the pope said after his Angelus address on Sunday.

Those who truly pray always pray for all, he said, explaining why he was concerned.

"A person does not commit evil because of praying. If someone commits evil against his people, he will be guilty for it but he cannot have committed evil because he prayed.

"Please, let no Christian church be abolished directly or indirectly. Churches are not to be touched!" he said.

New law

In April, a Kyiv International Institute of Sociology study found 83 percent thought the Government should intervene in the activities of the UOC.

The study also found 63 percent supported banning the UOC altogether.

On August 24, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed into law a bill banning the branch of the UOC dependent on the Moscow Patriarchate.

It is the country's main denomination.

Religious groups with ties to Russia have been given nine months to sever their relationship with Moscow or leave the country.

Persecution alleged

Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, who supports Russia's invasion of Ukraine, is not pleased with the new law.

He says Kyiv is "persecuting" followers of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church dependent on the Moscow Patriarchate.

The split has deepened the Russia-Ukraine conflict's religious dimension, giving Kirill cause to defend Russia's invasion.

It is a holy war, he says.

However, that branch of the Orthodox Church has been losing influence since a new independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church was founded in 2018.

Nonetheless, it still has thousands of Ukrainian parishes.

Conflicted interests alleged

Even though UOC cut ties with Moscow in 2022 after the conflict in Ukraine began, Ukrainian authorities consider it to be under Russian influence.

The authorities have increasingly launched legal actions, searches and seizures against it.

The Ukraine security service has accused the UOC of acting as a platform to justify the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Its churches are havens for spies, the security service alleges. It has launched criminal proceedings against at least 100 UOC clergy members. So far, 26 clergy have been sentenced.

Source

• La Croix
• RNS

The most recent call came from former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Williams, after Patriarch Kirill of Moscow praised his country's armed forces and claimed they were acting in line with the gospel and Christian teaching.

The case for expelling "is a strong one, and I have a suspicion that some other Orthodox Churches would take the same view" the former archbishop says.

Williams, who speaks Russian and is an expert on Orthodoxy, says many in the Orthodox world feel that Orthodoxy itself is compromised.

"The riot act has to be read.

"When a Church is actively supporting a war of aggression, failing to condemn nakedly obvious breaches in any kind of ethical conduct in wartime, then other Churches have the right to raise the question and challenge it — to say, unless you can say something effective about this, something recognisably Christian, we have to look again at your membership."

He says he cannot accept the use of Christian terminology to justify "a nakedly aggressive, unprincipled act of violence against a neighbouring Christian nation".

"I'm still waiting for any senior voices in the Russian Orthodox hierarchy to say the slaughter of the innocent in war is condemned unequivocally by all forms of Christianity," he says.

"I feel rather devastated that the current leadership of the Church is in danger of betraying everything most precious in what Russian Christianity has given to the wider world: the saints, the witnesses, the hugely complex and enriching history in spirituality, art and literature. All of that is being tarmacked over by this extraordinary and almost obsessive nationalist fervour."

Other Christian Church leaders are even more blunt in their views on Kirill's behaviour.

The leader of the independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Epiphany Dumenko, says Kirill has "made his choice in favour of the Antichrist. . .

"I urge those who still have him as their shepherd: open your eyes ... and do not be his accomplices."

The US-based Dietrich Bonhoeffer Institute has accused Kirill of turning President Putin's "military campaign into a religious war". It has been urging the World Council of Churches to prevent Russian Orthodox leaders from "using Christianity as a cover for mass murder".

What Kirill needs to do

Williams says the "minimum" to be expected is for Kirill and others to "press for an effective and credible ceasefire". The Patriarch is "answerable to Jesus Christ" for the Orthodox Ukrainians being "killed by other members of his own flock", he notes.

The former archbishop's wish seems unlikely to be granted however. Kirill has been urging Russians at Mass to pray for "multiplying the power of our armed forces" and reminding soldiers of "the historical importance of the present moment".

Those caught up in the Ukraine war were "peoples of Holy Russia", he says.

Source

• Church Times