Metropolitan Epiphanius of Kyiv and President Volodymyr Zelensky. St. Michael’s Gold-Domed Monastery. April 2019.

In my recent contribution to the Kyiv Post’s “Ukrainian Voices from Abroad: Advice for Zelenskiy” series, I urged the new President to support the stability of the autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) while also ensuring the legal status of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine headed by Metropolitan Onuphrius—provided that any and all evidence of the latter’s complicity with the Kremlin to undermine Ukraine’s national security and interests be swiftly investigated.

As Halya Coynash reported in February 2018 and scholar Dmitry Adamsky sets forth in his chillingly titled Russian Nuclear Orthodoxy—to cite but two testimonies among many—there can be no doubt that the Kremlin and the Moscow Patriarchate work hand in glove to advance Vladimir Putin’s geopolitical agenda in Ukraine and around the globe. Jonathan Luxmoore has reported that Patriarch Kirill of Moscow went so far as to ridicule the idea of independent Ukrainian nationhood as a Uniate (Greek-Catholic) invention in his remarks to Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople when they met at the Phanar last August. Read More

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Following the rubles seems to be a reliable predictor of where a given Patriarchate will stand on the question of Ukrainian autocephaly.

A May 19, 2019 report by Russia’s Union of Orthodox “Journalists”—arguably the Moscow Patriarchate’s most loyal peddler of propaganda after the Department for External Church Relations itself—cites the following statement by Patriarch Theophilus III of Jerusalem, delivered by his proxy to the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society and published on the Patriarchate’s website.

The Patriarch’s statement is remarkable for two reasons: first, while Jerusalem is lauded as “the Mother of the Churches” in our liturgical hymnography, we question where in Orthodox tradition the Patriarchate derives its self-designation as the guarantor of the unity of the Orthodox Church; and second, Theophilus makes no attempt to hide his reliance on Russian money as he heaps praise on Vladimir Putin and—as the UOJ is keen to point out—rejects the autocephaly of, and eucharistic communion with, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

Patriarch Theophilus III of Jerusalem

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Cardinal Raymond Burke speaks at a pro-life and pro-family conference in Rome on May 17, 2019. (National Catholic Reporter)

Back in February of this year, Pope Francis asked Catholics who have had the “joy” of assisting migrants and refugees to “proclaim it from the rooftops, openly, to help others do the same, preparing themselves to encounter Christ and His salvation.” (February 15, 2019 in Sacrofano, Italy at the conference entitled, “Welcoming Communities: Free of Fear”) 

Although a limited experience, I have shared in this joy, welcoming immigrants to the United States. In my own Catholic diocese, I helped resettle a Laotian family and an Islamic family from Northern Africa. For me, this welcome took the form of an American and his pickup truck—as that was my role—collecting donated furniture from parishes and delivering it to their new homes. And joy describes it aptly: arriving with truckloads of furniture and appliances while grateful recipients helped me to unload and carry in the contents of their growing households, building their new lives in the US.

This for me is patriotism. Read More