Russia’s ‘Sacrilegious War’ Shatters Orthodox Unity, Prompts Response From Pope Leo

National Catholic Register, 7 July 2025

Despite what desires remain in Rome for full communion, it is a complete impossibility when the two most important Orthodox patriarchates are not in communion with each other.

In the history of ecumenism, this June 28 was most unusual. The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople — primus sine paribus (first without equals) among Orthodox Christians — customarily sends a delegation to Rome for the patronal feast of Sts. Peter and Paul. The Holy See reciprocates in November for the feast of St. Andrew, patron of Constantinople.

Pope Leo XIV welcomed the Orthodox delegation in the Apostolic Palace, assuring them of his “desire to persevere in the effort to restore full visible communion between our Churches.”

Just a few hours later, in St. Peter’s Basilica, the Holy Father was presented with documentation that the gravitational center of Orthodox Christianity — the Russian Orthodox Church, which accounts for some 100 million of approximately 225 million Orthodox worldwide — was complicit in a “sacrilegious war” in Ukraine.

At the end of a papal audience granted to 7,000 pilgrims from the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (UGCC) in St. Peter’s Basilica, Pope Leo received from Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, “Father and Head” of the UGCC, his own book entitled in Spanish, Crónica de Una Guerra Sacrílega (“Chronicle of Sacrilegious War”).

In the space of just a few hours, Leo went from committing himself to seeking communion with the Orthodox to confronting the reality that some Orthodox are waging war on their fellow Christians.

Relations between Rome and Constantinople are excellent. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew comes to Rome often, most recently for both the funeral of Pope Francis and the inaugural Mass of Pope Leo. But within its direct jurisdiction in Turkey, Constantinople has only a few thousand Christians. It remains historically and ecclesially important, but Russia is the dominant reality in global Orthodoxy. And the Russian Orthodox Church supports, with appeals to religion, the Russian military aggression in Ukraine, waged against Ukrainians who are mostly Orthodox themselves. (Catholics in Ukraine are about 10% of the population.)

That Patriarch Kirill of Moscow has aligned himself with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war is well known. Underscoring the depth of that alignment, Ukraine in recent days suspended the citizenship of Metropolitan Onufrii, head of the Moscow-linked Ukrainian Orthodox Church, citing his Russian passport and ongoing ties to Kirill’s Russian Orthodox Church. Even Pope Francis — who put a high priority on good relations with Moscow, often to Ukraine’s frustration — warned Kirill against serving as “Putin’s altar boy.”

Ecumenical relations always require a willingness to look toward positive signs, no matter how slim, and away from even obvious obstacles. Yet rarely is that as manifest as it was on June 28. The “full visible communion” of which the Holy Father spoke is entirely impossible when the most populous Orthodox patriarchate in the world is guilty of sacrilege, blessing the slaughter of both Orthodox and Catholic Ukrainians for the cause of Russian imperialism. It is as great a scandal as any in the history of Christianity, that the “Third Rome,” as Moscow styles her own spiritual patrimony, is complicit in a brutal war against fellow Christians for political reasons.

The corruption of Moscow is deep and dark. The wounds inflicted on Christian unity by Moscow are greater, in a sense, than during the Catholic-Protestant wars after the Reformation, as this is a war between Orthodox nations.

Constantinople has already recognized the independence of the Ukrainian Orthodox from Muscovite control, which led Moscow to break communion with Constantinople. Despite what desires remain in Rome for full communion, it is a complete impossibility when the two most important Orthodox patriarchates are not in communion with each other.

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