It’s time the Russian Orthodox Church leader separate himself from Putin’s horrid war

Pope Francis recently made a repentance journey to Canada. His mission was to apologize for the institution of the Catholic Church in Canada, which over a hundred years ago created residential schools to educate indigenous children regarding the ways and culture of Western civilization.

The Catholics were not the only religion that engaged in this massive effort to transform Indian children into Western-educated children. The Protestant denomination of Christianity also participated in this effort, but clearly the Catholics operated over 70% of these schools. It was the beginning of a nightmare not only of cultural genocide but of massive sexual abuse of the children and murder as well. The discovery of mass graves of children unleashed this horrific story to the world.

Appearing before the Indigenous community,The pope said, “I would like to begin what I consider a penitential pilgrimage. I have come to your native lands to tell you in person of my sorrow, to implore God’s forgiveness, healing and reconciliation, to express my closeness and to pray with you and for you.”

The pope went on to acknowledge the crimes against the Indigenous peoples of the Maskwacis lands. He quoted from the Nobel Peace Prize recipient and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel by saying, “Yet it is right to remember, because forgetfulness leads to indifference and, as has been said, the opposite of love is not hatred, it’s indifference … and the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.”

Pope Francis went on to identify the crimes against the indigenous population.

“Again, I think back on the stories you told: How the policies of assimilation ended up systematically marginalizing the Indigenous peoples; how also through the system of residential schools your languages and cultures were denigrated and suppressed; how children suffered physical, verbal, psychological and spiritual abuse; how they were taken away from their homes at a young age, and how that indelibly affected relationships between parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren.”

Then the pope offered his full-throated apology and request for forgiveness.

“In the face of this deplorable evil, the Church kneels before God and implores his forgiveness for the sins of her children” (cf. JOHN PAUL II, Bull Incarnationis Mysterium [29 November 1998), 11: AAS 91 [1999], 140).

“I myself wish to reaffirm this, with shame and unambiguously I humbly beg forgiveness for the evil committed by so many Christians against the Indigenous peoples.”

The reaction of the survivors and the generations who remember these events from the stories told to them by their descendants indicated that they appreciated the strength and sincerity of his speech, and I am confident that there was some degree of healing that day.

I am hoping for the day when another religious leader will make a similar kind of journey of penance for the crimes of his nation and his church by speaking to incite war and killing in the name of his faith. I am referring to the Russian Orthodox Church leader, Patriarch Kirill, who has stood shoulder to shoulder with President Putin advocating and supporting Russia in this brutal war to destroy their so-called Ukrainian brothers.

The Ukrainian church has since broken away from the authority of the Russian church and received permission from the Orthodox Church in Turkey, which is the central authority of the Orthodox Church worldwide.

On the other hand, Kirill continues to support the slaughter of his co-religionists in Ukraine and alludes to the ludicrous lie that the Nazis are in Ukraine and that so-called other “external forces” are responsible for this war. Putin and Kirill are sinful partners in this unprovoked war and now have blood on them for the thousands of Ukrainians and Russians who have lost their lives. Patriarch Kirill cheers on the Russian soldiers in their effort to extinguish his own Orthodox co-religionists in Ukraine. Will there come a day when Kirill or his successor will make atonement for the crimes of religious indifference against Ukraine?

We have seen this unholy alliance in the past when religious leaders aligned themselves with dictators of their country. Many of the churches in Germany and other Nazi allied nations and their churches during World War II justified the annihilation of the Jewish people and other peoples in the Nazi genocide.

Putin uses Kirill to provide him with legitimacy to conduct this brutal war against Ukraine. In Russian history, a slogan created in 1832 by Count Sergey S. Uvarov, minister of education 1833-49, came to represent the official ideology of the imperial government of Nicholas I (reigned 1825-55).

The guiding principle behind the godless and profane alignment between dictator and religious leader shaped imperial Russian rule and was known as “Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality.” As we see with the unholy partnership between Kirill and Putin that nothing has changed and this ideology still applies today in Russia.

Religious leaders have choices to make between the rites of their faith traditions and the rightness of their moral conduct. Pope Francis made the right and bold decision in his atonement to the Indigenous peoples of Canada.

I can only pray that Kirill’s indifference to his own Orthodox Christian sufferings will be exposed and condemned by future leaders of his own church. Indifference is, as Wiesel said, the opposite of life and it is the crime that Putin and Kirill stand accused of in this horrid war.

Rabbi Brad L. Bloom serves Congregation Beth Yam. He attended the University of Wisconsin and lives on Hilton Head Island.