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Kirill, the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, has blamed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on liberal Western values, particularly gay pride parades. The remarks justifying Ukraine’s invasion were made during a sermon on Sunday.
Kirill is a long-standing ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and he has so far refrained from criticizing Russia’s invasion.
“We have entered a struggle with a metaphysical significance, not a physical significance,” he said during the Forgiveness Sunday sermon.
Kirill then turned his attention to the situation in Donbas, Ukraine’s breakaway eastern region held by pro-Russia separatist groups since 2014. He echoed Putin’s baseless claims that Ukraine was “exterminating” Russian loyalists in Donbas.
For the past eight years, attempts have been made to destroy what remains in Donbas. And in Donbas, there is a fundamental rejection of the so-called values offered today by those who claim world power,” Kirill said.
He went on to say that countries that do not accept these values are not considered to be part of the world. The demands that these countries hold gay parades are a “test of loyalty,” according to the Russian church’s leader.
“Pride parades are intended to demonstrate that sin is just one type of human behavior.” “That is why, in order to join the club of those countries, you must have a gay pride parade,” Kirill explained.
“If humanity accepts that sin is not a violation of God’s law, that sin is a variation of human behavior,” he continues, “human civilization will end there.”
According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, Kirill, born Vladimir Mikhailovich Gundyaev, graduated from Leningrad Theological Academy in 1970. In 1971, he was appointed as the Russian Orthodox Church’s representative to the World Council of Churches in Geneva.
Kirill was appointed patriarch in January 2009.
