Moscow Patriarchate official: Church has no intention of intervening in conflict in Ukraine
May 2014
Moscow, May 21, Interfax – Vladimir Legoyda, the head of the Information Department of the Moscow Patriarchate, said said attempts are being made to involve the Russian Orthodox Church in the political conflict in Ukraine and reiterated that the church can only be a participant in the peace settlement process.
“They are trying to involve the church in this conflict using all methods, but they don’t understand that the nature of church rules out such involvement and its position is the only constructive position in a situation when no political or other public force has nationwide legitimacy. All these things make the Church a necessary participant in the peace settlement process,” Legoyda told reporters in Moscow on Wednesday.
Legoyda said that, when some public forces try to present the church as caring for something different from the care for peace in Ukraine, they “deliberately distort the role played by the church in the life of people and society and evidentially exacerbate the situation, which is difficult as it is.”
Legoyda said that many people in conflicts do not even think that “someone is capable of looking at the world in a way that does not involve a political conflict.”
