Today, Explained - A priest explains Putin’s “holy” war

Episode Date: May 9, 2022

Patriarch Kirill is the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church. A former colleague describes him as a one-time anti-Kremlin nonconformist. Now, he’s blessing Russia’s war in Ukraine. This episode was produced by Haleema Shah, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard and Victoria Dominguez, engineered by Paul Mounsey, and hosted by Noel King. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained   Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King. Vladimir Putin may not have a lot of friends, but he's got an ace in the hole. The war equals guns plus ideas. So essentially the church is the main provider of ideas, giving legitimacy for the war. A take on Patriarch Kirill. He's the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, and he has made so many pro-war statements that Pope Francis, on a Zoom call, reportedly warned him not to become Putin's altar boy. Now, all of this has left one person who knows Kirill thinking, the Patriarch has made a deal with the devil because this is not the Kirill he remembers.

He remembers a religious man who, many years ago, didn't have much use for the Kremlin. Coming up, we talk to the priest who knew the patriarch who made Russia's war holy. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained. Father Cyril Hoverun is a professor at the Stockholm School of Theology in Sweden.

He teaches ecclesiology, international relations, and ecumenism. Before that, he worked with Patriarch Kirill for about 10 years. Well, he's also known as the primate of an Orthodox church. The primate means he's the top hierarch in the Church who manages the matters of the entire Church, including the bishops. We are not exactly like the Catholic Church, which has only one pope. We have several primates, like popes, in different churches, and the Russian church is the largest one. And Patrick Kirill is the most senior hierarch of that church.

He has run a very successful TV show on one of the Russian central channels. That TV show was really kind of evangelizing, you know, explaining people the gospel. And I should say that the original intention of Kirill was exactly to re-evangelize the Russian people after the collapse of the Soviet ideology. I think the Pope of Rome is a sort of ideal for him, or Graham in the United States in the American context. You have the ability to choose whether you will follow God or go your own way, which Satan wants you to do. He wants to be a prominent religious figure, not just for Russia, but for the entire globe. It is not known what will happen become a prominent figure in Russia, he has been included and accepted to the Russian establishment as the kind of top-notch, top-ranked official, but he failed to become a global

religious leader. That is quite clear now, and it seems that one cannot be simultaneously a top religious leader in Russia and globally. He is in his 70s, which means Russia was the Soviet Union when he was born, yeah? Exactly. He's from a priestly family. His father was a priest indeed. And generally his family was a traditional Russian family of, you know, hardworking people, pious people who attended the church, churchgoers. The Soviet Union was officially an atheist state,

meaning the state formally tolerated religion as a private thing. But even as a private thing, religion was persecuted in the Soviet Union. The Soviet idea, the communist idea, was to purge religion from all pockets of the Soviet society, even from the private lives of people. That meant that someone who wanted to practice their Christianity, especially a younger person, was severely oppressed. That person would be literally ostracized from everything. The only work that such a person might have had

was a janitor. So no intellectual work. So a complete, complete marginalization. One night, I was thrown into a cell with a broken window. The KGB was determined to do an experiment and freeze me. Many of them, under Stalin, before the World War II, most bishops and most priests and most monks and nuns were killed, literally. Before the revolution in 1914, there were about 70,000 representatives

of the clergy in Russia. But by the end of 1937, only 100 remained alive and free. And exactly under such conditions, the future Patriarch Kirill grew up, and he still thinks that the Church has reached a position of being prominent in the public space, just the opposite from what it was in the Soviet era. And he is very proud about what he has achieved. You're laying out an arc in which to be a member of the Christian church is to be maligned,

and the church itself as an institution is maligned. How then, and when then, did the church begin to develop a relationship with the atheist Kremlin? It always had a relationship with the atheist Kremlin, quite surprisingly. So on the one hand, the Kremlin, the communist regime killed, exterminated the church, literally. On the other hand, it used some church hierarchs. Their lives were threatened, and the Kremlin forced those hierarchs to collaborate. After the World War II, it was easier. The hierarchs were not threatened with imprisonment or being killed, but they were urged to collaboration with the state by different privileges and benefits.

For example, in the situation when the entire country was behind the Iron Curtain and they could not leave the country, could not go abroad, some hierarchs who agreed to collaborate with the Soviet regime were allowed to leave the country to go abroad in order exactly to disseminate the propaganda that the Soviet state wanted them to bring to the West. They for example said that the church is fine in the Soviet Union, it's not persecuted. Which was a lie, of course. But that's how the Soviet states started using the church in the Soviet period

to disseminate its propaganda in the West and in the East in different contexts. So you have this young priest, Kirill, who's rising through the ranks of that church. And it sounds to me like as a young man, he doesn't like the Kremlin at all. In the beginning, he was quite anti-Soviet, I should say. He grew up and matured as a personality with aversion to the Soviet ideology, to the Soviet lifestyle, even to the KGB. I think he was, in the beginning of his career in the church, he was quite a non-conformist. He was accused widely of being too modernist, too modernizing, too much an open-minded person.

And indeed, I believe he was a very open-minded person. And then after he became the Patriarch, I think he changed as a personality dramatically. He made like a U-turn from the most open-minded hierarch of the Russian church. He became probably the most conservative. I once said that if Kirill, before he was the Patriarch, were to be judged by the Patriarch Kirill, he would not have had a chance to survive. I mean, the personality, the kind of personality that the patriarch Kirill opposed when he became the patriarch was exactly the kind of personality that he was before he became the patriarch. His younger self would hate his older self.

And vice versa. Probably he understands that Putin is not an ideal ruler. And probably he understands that Putin is a brute, is kind of a bloodthirsty tyrant. But Kirill perceives his relationship with Putin as a sort of a deal with the devil. The church is prosperous under Putin's regime. At the same time, the church is as encaged as it was under the Soviet regime. So essentially, the church is like in a golden cage under Putin. It enjoys a lot of benefits from the regime. At the same time, he has to keep silent. That's why not a single voice from the Russian hierarchs can be heard.

Even though many disagree, the bishops of the Russian church, many disagree with what Putin does or with what the Patriarch does, but they keep silent because they understand that the price to protest would be too high and they will lose every comfort that they enjoy. Support for Today Explained comes from Ramp. Ramp is the corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket. Ramp says they give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend. With Ramp, you're able to issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions and automate expense reporting so you can stop wasting time at the end of every month. And now you can get $250 when you join Ramp. You can go to ramp.com slash explained, ramp.com slash explained, r-a-m-p.com slash explained. Cards issued by Sutton Bank. member FDIC, terms and conditions apply. buzzer. You're always taken care of with a sportsbook born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get

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Pope Francis delivered a stern warning to the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church. His message? Don't be Vladimir Putin's altar boy. It's Today Explained. We're back with Father Cyril Hovorun. Father Cyril, when does Kirill become patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church? How does he get into that position of power? It was in 2009. And this was exactly the period when Putin was not the president. And I'm not sure that Putin would have supported Kirill if Putin was the president at the time.

They were not exactly friends and they are not still friends, I believe. I describe their relationship as a marriage of convenience rather than the marriage of love. Because of Kirill's non-conformism, and Putin knew about that because Putin is to his bones, is a KGB person, that created some kind of, I think, bad chemistry between the two personalities. But then when Kirill was elected the Patriarch and Putin became soon re-elected as the president, they started working together because they realized how they both could be benefited from each other. Father, I could understand why someone needs Vladimir Putin. He is a dangerous

man. He is the leader of Russia. He is not someone that you want to cross. How does a priest, how does a holy man become so influential that Vladimir Putin has no choice but to work with him? I think it was Putin's choice to work with Kirill. Kirill made himself useful to Putin by providing this ideology of the Russian world that actually substituted the Soviet ideology. So Putin actually received two precious things from the church under Kirill. The first thing was the ideology. Kirill really hated the communist ideology. I think Putin also hated the communist ideology and still hates the communist ideology. His generation was unable to produce any substitute for the Soviet ideology. And essentially what Kirill did, he offered a substitute for the communist ideology which

features their symbolism and their fears from the Soviet era. For example, it includes the admiration of Stalin. Even though Stalin had killed most bishops and priests of the Russian church, now many priests and bishops in the Russian Church admire Stalin. Another part is this monarchical idea, the idea of monarchy. Many in the Russian Church present Putin as a sort of a new monarch, a new tsar, a successor of the Romanovs. Essentially, this ideology of the Russian world is a sort of nationalism. It states essentially that Russia is not just about the Russian ethnos, the Russian nation.

Russia is wider, it's about the inclusion of other nations to the framework of the Russians, what they call civilization. And it includes Chechens or Buryats or Dagestani people and Ukrainians. I want to say, I'm a Laker, I'm a Dagestanian, I'm a Chechen, Ingush, Russian, Tatar, Jew, Mardin, Ossetian. So they believe that the Ukrainians owe to be a part of this Russian civilization. Therefore, they believe that they don't attack another nation Они верят, что украинцы должны быть частью этой русской цивилизации. Поэтому они верят, что они не атакуют другую нацию.

Они освободят свою нацию от восточной влияния и от неправильной идентики. Итак, начну с того, что современная Украина целиком и полностью была создана Россией. Это потому, что они верят в этот русский мир, который шире, чем Россия. That is because they believe in this Russian world which is wider than Russia, and they believe that this Russian civilization has an exceptional role to play in the history. Hence, it's a messianic character of this civilization. They believe that God wants Russia to play a special role in this world, to sustain the basic principles of this world, the basic values of this world against the assumed Western corruption and decadence. And Putin went to the war essentially not so much even against Ukraine

as against the West. And he believes that he has this special historical mission to liberate the world from itself. Does he really believe this ideology, one in which a Christian church is okay with Joseph Stalin? I think in the beginning, I believe Patrick Kirill, when I knew him, he could not tolerate the figure of Stalin, certainly. He was anti-Stalinist. As he, you know, continued to be the patriarch and continued to produce this ideology, I think he came to tolerate Stalin more and more because Putin believes himself to be a sort of reincarnation of Stalin. Kirill supports it, even though I don't believe that he is still kind of sincerely, deeply in his soul, is in sympathy with the figure of Stalin. I guess you could determine if this strategy is working by asking how many Russians practice

Orthodox Christianity and whether that number is growing under Patriarch Kirill. Sociological data indicate that how his project of evangelizing the Russian people failed because the number of those who started going to the church, the churchgoers, did not increase dramatically. It still does not exceed 5% of the total population, which is really, really tiny. Yeah, it's tiny. But the numbers of those who support his ideology, his secular ideology, you know, this Russian nationalism ideology or Russian exceptionalism ideology is very high, extremely high. It's over 80%. So this mixture that he has produced did not attract people to

the church, but it has indoctrinated the Russians and has substituted really the Soviet ideology with another kind of quasi-Soviet ideology, if you want. What does the indoctrination look like with respect to the war in Ukraine? What's he saying to Russians? Patrick Kirill just repeats the talking points of the Kremlin propagandists and speakers, including Putin himself. Actually, I would say that Putin speaks the language of the church to a great extent and uses the vocabulary which had been produced by the church and which includes the notions such as traditional values, meaning the conservative agenda, which is, by the way, widely spread in the United States through the conservative evangelicals or conservative Catholics. So Putin speaks that language. I hear some voices in the West that say it's all about Putin. If Putin is gone,

the Russian people will come back to the normal. No, it's not going to Putin. If Putin is gone, the Russian people will come back to the normal. No, it's not going to happen. If he's gone, Putinism will stay. And this Putinism, I believe, unfortunately, will be sustained by the church if there are no changes happening to the church and to the Russian society. So even after Putin is gone, there is a huge work ahead of us to what I call deputinize the Russian society, the Russian soul, the Russian psyche, and the Russian church. So you said that a lot of Orthodox churches in Ukraine are still part of the Russian Orthodox Church. The patriarch of that church is saying things akin to,

this is a holy war, this is a justified invasion. How are Ukrainian Christians responding? Yes, they are absolutely disappointed and stunned by such declarations and such statements. Even as I said in the beginning, even those who originally supported Russia, were in favor of Russia, regardless of what happened in Ukraine in 2014, they are really averted from Russia. So I don't, I think there are no supporters of Russia in the Ukrainian church anymore. There were numerous appeals from the Ukrainian clergy to their hierarchs, to their bishops, asking them to stop

commemorating Patriarch Kirill, for example, or to break off ties with the Moscow Patriarch at all. And they are really confused. There are over 12,000 communities under the influence in the kind of communion with the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine, and they are confused. They don't want, many of them don't want to stay in the Moscow Patriarchate anymore, and they look for themselves for other places where to go. In March, this parish decided to split from its mother church in Moscow, joining instead the Istanbul-based Orthodox Church, whose leader has criticized the war. So they're on the way of seeking for a new home, church home for themselves,

and this has been caused by the statements of Patrick Kirill. By separating from Moscow, Father Volodymyr Melnychuk told us, we are adhering to the Christian vision of the world. As a priest and a practitioner and a leader in this religion, how worried or anxious or scared are you that this situation is threatening to tear the Orthodox Church apart, or at the very least, delegitimize it in the eyes of millions and millions of people? Well, I'm much more worried about the latter because indeed the reputation of the Orthodox Church is in danger. I'm myself critical about, you know, the standpoint of the Russian Church in this war, but I believe that the entire Church is not to be blamed for that. We are talking

about the distortion of Orthodoxy, the distortion of the tradition that we belong to. We have a special word in our tradition for that distortion. It's called heresy. We believe that to a great extent, what is being preached by the patriarch and his confederates is a sort of heresy, a sort of distortion. And we need to correct this. As for the divisions within the church, they're painful. But I think we will manage eventually to kind of find a new equilibrium between different jurisdictions within the Orthodoxy. We believe that we still belong to the one church, even though we commemorate different church leaders.

But eventually, I think we will manage to overcome this division. Father Cyril is hopeful about the future of the church. About the war? Well, Vladimir Putin spoke today at a big military parade in Moscow. It marked the anniversary of the day that the Soviet Union defeated the Nazis. It was the kind of speech we've come to expect from Putin. He fully defended the war in Ukraine. He said this war, too, is a fight against Nazism. You are fighting for the motherland, for its future,

so that lessons of the World War II are not forgotten, so that there is no place in history for the punitive divisions of Nazis. He didn't, and maybe this part is hopeful, suggest that he has any plans to expand the war. Right before Putin took his turn at that parade, Volodymyr Zelensky did the thing we've come to expect. He got out in front of Putin and the parade with a highly produced video. Zelensky is walking through empty streets, piano music is playing, and he says, on the day of victory over Nazism, we're fighting for a new victory. And then he says, we're smarter than our enemy by one book.

And for a minute, it sort of seems like Zelensky is going to say the Bible. That is not, in fact, it. He goes on to say he's referring to a textbook on the history of Ukraine. Today's episode was produced by Halima Shah and Tori Dominguez. It was fact-checked religiously by Laura Bullard. It was edited by Matthew Collette. It was engineered by Paul Mounsey. Afim Shapiro helped us with translations. Thank you, Afim. I'm Noelle King. It was edited by Matthew Collette. It was engineered by Paul Mounsey. Afim Shapiro helped us with translations. Thank you, Afim. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained. і все, що робили вони. Він приречить, бо проклятий мільйонами предків,

коли почав наслідувати їхнього вбивцю. А тому втратить все. І зовсім скоро в Україні буде два дні перемоги. А в когось не залишиться жодного. Перемогли тоді, переможемо і зараз. І хрещатик побачить парад перемоги. Перемоги України. З Днем перемоги над нацизмом.

Слава Україні! you