The Russian Orthodox Church and the Holy See: 70 Years of Political Ecumenism

Pavlo Smytsnyuk is a Mary Seeger O’Boyle Associate Research Scholar at Princeton University.

The Russia-Ukraine war has posed a significant challenge to relations between the Holy See and the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC). Although the Vatican’s position on the war has been criticized by some as ambiguous and overly neutral, certain war-related comments by Catholic leadership have been interpreted negatively by the ROC. The Pope’s warning that Kirill must not serve as Putin’s “altar boy” was followed by an accusation by Cardinal Kurt Koch (Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, the main Vatican body on inter-confessional relations) that the ROC was in a state of “heresy,” in light of its justification for the war in Ukraine.

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How the Russian Orthodox Church Preserves International Sympathies for Russia’s War Against Ukraine

Regina Elsner is a professor of Eastern Churches and Ecumenical Theology at the Catholic-Theological Faculty at the University of Münster.

For the Christian world, religious legitimation of military aggression has become increasingly untenable, particularly after German Protestant and Catholic representatives stood on the side of Hitler’s warfare. Decades of theological engagement, reconciliation, and ecumenical dialogue followed the World Council of Church’s 1948 assertion that “war is contrary to the will of God,” and churches have since published countless documents  positioning themselves as the vanguards of justice, peace, and preservation of God’s creation.

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A Moralist International Under Arms? Russia’s Role in the Global Culture Wars, Prior to and During Its War With Ukraine

Kristina Stoeckl is a full professor of sociology at LUISS Guido Carli University in Rome.

In the decade preceding Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, from roughly 2012 until 2022, the Russian Orthodox Church, Russian politicians, state diplomats, and civil society organizations financed by Kremlin- or church-affiliated entrepreneurs worked in unison to create the image of Russia as the defender of “traditional values” in Europe and in the world.

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