The Russian invasion of Ukraine might not even have to happen were it not for liberal values of the West, in particular LGBTQIA+ pride parades, that pop up in countries guided by such turpitude of spirit. This is what the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Cyril 1°, suggested in a sermon on Sunday (6).
A friend of Vladimir Putin, the cleric lamented efforts to “destroy what exists in Donbass”, in reference to the region of eastern Ukraine fought over by pro-Russian separatists who were recognized by Moscow as independents. For there, according to Cirilo, there would be “a fundamental rejection” of this moral mess offered “by those who clamor for world power”.
Hence the tantrum with LGBTQIA+ acts. “To join the club in these countries, you have to do a gay pride parade,” the patriarch said on a date known to Orthodox churches as Forgiveness Sunday, which precedes Lent. A day to ask each other for forgiveness for offenses committed.
In short: the spiritual leader envisions a battle between good and evil, in which it would be up to Russia to protect Ukraine from those who try to pervert Kiev.
“If Cyril’s bizarre sermon still surprises, it’s time to learn history,” suggested Katherine Kelaides, a historian specializing in contemporary orthodox, in an article published by the journal Religion Dispatches. The patriarch’s tone shocked a total of zero people familiar with the character.
In recent years, Cyril, 75, and Putin, 69, have worked to position the Russian Church — and by extension their host country — as captains of the global religious right, according to Kelaidis. An ideological trench against causes deemed too progressive for the Kremlin’s taste.
The current conflict would be another chapter, so far the most tense, of this narrative. “Cirilo supported the war, despite some vague calls for peace,” the expert tells sheet. “He reaffirmed Putin’s line that Ukraine is Russian land by right. This is also his ecclesiastical claim.”
It was in this context that the religious argued that some countries – read the West – force others to carry out sexual diversity parades as a “loyalty test”.
The patriarch is loyal to the former KGB agent and, in 2012, publicly supported his presidential candidacy. That year, feminist band Pussy Riot protested with a “punk prayer” at the main Moscow cathedral. The arrest of members of the group became a symbol of the gradual repression of dissidents from the Russian government.
“The devil laughed at us”, said the religious after the group sang the song that, in Portuguese, would have as its title “Virgin Mary, Mother of God, expel Putin”, less than two weeks before the election. He declined, at the time, of pleas for clemency coming even from the Orthodox, who account for about half of the Russian population. There was no reason to “minimize this sacrilege,” he declared.
Like Putin, Cyril is from St. Petersburg, known for Leningrad in the days of the Soviet Union. With the support of the autocrat, he advocates for the moralization of society, in a campaign in favor of Christian education in schools and against abortion and sexual diversity.
Following in the footsteps of his father, a cleric, he was ordained in the Soviet era. In 2009, he assumed the head of the local ecclesiastical hierarchy. The closeness to Putin is part of the effort to bring the Orthodox Church “back to the center of Russian state power”, according to Kelaidis.
For the sake of the alliance, the pair circulated a rumor that Cyril’s father baptized a child Putin in 1952. “If that sounds weird, it’s typical of Imperial Russia,” says the historian. Rumors of the same nature involving emperors and patriarchs were commonplace.
Over the years, Cirilo’s supposed taste for luxury items has resulted in reports around the world.
The institution even apologized after fellow countrymen bloggers viralized a 2009 photo in which the patriarch appears with a Breguet gold watch, at the time valued at 30,000 euros (which today would give R$167,000). Or rather, what you can see in the portrait is the reflection of the clock — someone digitally erased the item, but forgot to remove the mirror image on a wooden table.
Before the official apology, the patriarch himself had tried to make, in an interview with a friendly Kremlin journalist, another thesis. A disaffected would have used Photoshop to insert that Breguet on his wrist, once described by the brand as a “sine qua non of any representation of the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie or, simply, of a life of luxury and elegance”.
Rumors of a life of ostentation, which would include a private yacht and private jet travel, have long haunted the patriarch. However, they have never been proven. Deleting his pompous biography clock, on the other hand, proved to be a more arduous task.
Cyril already wore the same adornment in a meeting with Putin, then prime minister, in 2012. He wasted no time in patting his ally, a “miracle of God” that would have freed Russia from a “terrible systemic crisis”. The Russian who ten years later would orchestrate Ukraine’s war returned to the presidency that same year, and has never left — a reform passed two years ago could leave him in power for another 14 years. He had previously headed the country from 2000 to 2008.
Cirilo visited Brazil in 2016, when he was welcomed by the current president, Dilma Rousseff (PT), at Palácio da Alvorada. There, he defended humanitarian missions in areas of religious conflict.
Days earlier, he had a historic meeting with Pope Francis in Cuba. Both sides claim to be Catholic, but Orthodox have not recognized papal authority since the Eastern schism with Rome that split Christianity in 1054. Leaders of the two churches have not met for nearly a millennium.
In this military battle with the breath of World War III, they are once again on opposite sides. On the Sunday that Cyril I associated LGBTQIA+ parades with Ukrainian ruin, the head of the Vatican condemned Moscow’s warlike attacks. “Rivers of blood and tears flow in Ukraine,” the pontiff said. War is also holy.
