Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople and Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė signed a cooperation agreement today to formally establish the presence of the Patriarchate of Constantinople
Patriarch Bartholomew, not content to reassess (or repent) of the mess he made in Ukraine, continues to roil the waters in Lithuania. Reacting to the disgruntlement of five defrocked Ukrainian priests, he decided to whip out his magic autocephaly-granting pen and create another “autocephalous” church while on a a visit to Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania.
It was twenty-seven years ago that he pulled this same stunt in Estonia, where the Estonian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) was already long-established and canonically recognized. Bartholomew set up a rival autonomous jurisdiction called the Estonian Apostolic Orthodox Church in 1996 and Moscow temporarily broke communion because of this egregious act. (It was also around this time when the Church of Greece broke communion with Bartholomew because of his claims of the “Northern Territories” of the Greek mainland.) According to Wikipedia, the canonical, Moscow-based church has 150,000 members while the schismatic church has only 20,000.
The provocations however extend to the United States, where these scathing remarks by Bartholomew were repeated on the Facebook page of the OCA’s New York Cathedral (a place of worship which is notorious for its espousal of the homosexual agenda):
“From the speech of Patriarch Bartholomew in Vilnius at the seminar ‘Reaction of churches and religious communities to wars and conflicts’: ‘After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the bankruptcy of communist ideology, pseudo-religion was born. The old imperial strategies were combined with cynical techniques and mechanisms developed and inherited from the Soviet Union. The Church and the state leadership of Russia are complicit in the crime – aggression [against Ukraine – prim. CH] and share responsibility for the crimes that followed, including the shocking abductions of Ukrainian children. They caused enormous suffering not only to the Ukrainian people, but also to the Russians themselves, among whom more than a hundred thousand victims and responsibility for terrible atrocities.'”
“Acting like the globalist pawn he truly is, and having ‘achieved’ a total mess in Ukraine where violence and religious prosecution by the ‘democratic’ Zelensky government has returned the country to medieval times, Pat. Bartholomew is now visiting Lithuania to make another mess of about 100.000 Orthodox living there… Maybe his goal is the two million Lithuanian Catholics?… After all, in two years, he plans to re-unify with the Catholic Church…
“A look at the map will convince you that the sole purpose of this trip by the Patriarch is to ‘poke the bear’… So far, the bear is growling and displaying her teeth for all to see… When she starts biting, there will be no place to hide… We are already hearing rumors that the “Ottomans” in Ankara will not allow another ‘election’ of a new Patriarch… What is to stop them? Nobody stopped them from turning Hagia Sophia into a mosque last year…
“The Russians and Putin, who in 2015 imposed on the Turks the re-opening of the historic Panagia Sumela monastery in Pontos (Eastern Turkey), will not move a finger… Not only that, but they will gladly see the Turks put Bartholomew in his rightful place… After all, the Turks seem to have reoriented East for good…” (You can read the entire piece here: https://www.helleniscope.com/2023/03/21/not-satisfied-that-he-made-a-mess-in-ukraine-now-bartholomew-visits-lithuania/)
We need to pray for peace.
The biggest cheerleaders of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the “special military operation” as you call it, says we have to pray for peace. Ha. Ask the “Ukronazis” who are members of the “canonical” church, how many of them support Russians invading and destroying their country.
Mike, from what we know so far, real Ukrainian Orthodox are still aligned with Metropolitan Onuphriy. It’s not them (or the Russians) who are trying to evict the monks from the Kiev Caves Lavra, it’s that neocon stooge Zelensky.
You answered something that has nothing to do with my question. How much do Ukrainians, from any church, including the “canonical” one, support the invasion of their country by Russia?
I imagine more than you or I can know at present.
I can say that all 5-6 million Ukrainians who live in the Donbass and the other areas are tickled pink about being liberated.
Just my impression.
People in Kharkiv, Odessa, Dnipro, Mykolaiv and other strongly Russian speaking, pro-Party of Regions territories, are not keen at all with being “liberated”, in fact, they havent been, thank God. You are confusing, perhaps willingly, being Russian speaking with “wanting Russia to invade my country” You can tell the faithful of the UOC that the “Kyiv regime” is attacking their church, that won’t make them support the Russian invasion. That’s how things are, like it or not.
So if every thing was hunky-dory, why do you think the Minsk agreements failed?
I’ll expect they’ll change their minds when the Banderists come knocking.
No George, it’s not for God to forgive you for what you say as it is true.
Instead, it is for God to damn Arhondonis for his crimes. It is for the Church to set him apart through anathema.
He is an evil man, deserving of nothing less than ridicule, mockery, excoriation, and, yes, damnation.
Yes, I judge this sick, evil, and wretched person in the same way I judge and reject Lucifer and his minions.
And Mr. Internet Priest, please add me to your list.
I will go further: He is an enemy of Christ and an antichrist, as are all those who side with him.
A broken clock is right twice a day. Areas within the bounds of the former Soviet Union did inherit Soviet techniques. Russia is responsible for atrocities in Ukraine. These are not “incitement to anti-Russian violence” any more than accusing China of coverups in the early days of COVID is an incitement to anti-Chinese violence.
Patriarch Bartholomew should not have inserted himself into the affairs of the Ukrainian church. However, that is an ecclesial matter. The state, and its relations with other states, are a separate matter.
It bears pointing out that Patriarch Kirill has not really endeared himself to Ukrainians by supporting President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Mark, you are completely correct in your first sentence. However you err in your second sentence as it is the Ukronazis who have committed literally thousands of atrocities.
You elide over the fact that this war began in 2014, when the Ukronazis bombarded the Donbass, killing 14,000+ Ukrainians living in the Donbass. (Also burning to death several protesters in Odessa.)
The Russians, if anything, have been remarkably restrained in their prosecution of this war. Not perfect mind you, but far less guilty than the Kiev regime.
Do you know which ROCOR parishes were threatened? I would like to pray for them.
We really have no use for the Patriarchate of Istanbul. The office is entirely redundant with the US State Department and has been for at least the past 60 years if not 100.
Ukrainian forces would have no need to use such munitions if Russia withdraws from Ukraine
I wish that were true. It’s because NATO insisted on the Ukraine joining it and placing American nukes on its territory that we are here today.
Ukraine has no need to use such munitions regardless. They add nothing militarily but simply poison the land and population of the Ukraine. Those who would deploy them are all nasty, evil creatures.
Uranium eventually decays into lead, so depleted uranium is merely a non-radioactive armament metal heavier, hence more effective than lead. Depleted uranium triagonal (Dardick) round flechettes came into heavy use in strategic defense in the 1980s for this reason. Dardick presented this in 1986 to Bircher ESCC which supplied so many of Putin’s moronic conspiracy theoriests. Ancestry seems to indicate GCM was kicked out of Duke Medical school in the 1980s. Brezhnev, who invented greeniac ‘traditional’ and ‘alternative’ medicine in the 1970s because he could not supply his population with the western advances they demanded. Brezhnev even funded Rodale/Prevention and Leatrile to give advanced medicine a bad name so he wouldn’t have to pay for it. (Editor Note: Deleted comments.)
I wisht this was the case. Ask the people in Fallujah, twenty years on about their increased rates of leukemia and birth defects.
https://hir.harvard.edu/depleted-uranium-devastated-health-military-operations-and-environmental-injustice-in-the-middle-east/
From the article:
“Militaries should not use depleted uranium if
research shows that it harms human health.”
Is that not what militaries are for?
Freddie Ponton [3rd May 2022]: Are France and NATO
Shipping Depleted Uranium Weaponry Into Ukraine?
https://21stcenturywire.com/2022/05/03/revealed-are-france-and-nato-shipping-depleted-uranium-weaponry-into-ukraine/
‘ … According to the various statements made by Macron’s government, we can gather that Milan missiles, Caesar guns and shells, are the bulk of these deliveries. It is very clear that this material was chosen because it meets the following criteria:
End-of-life equipment (old)
Depleted uranium bombs/missiles
This second item is by far the most problematic. Before analyzing these weapons it is important to understand the knowledge and perception associated with the use of Depleted Uranium (DU) munitions in military warfare.
Which raises the obvious question: are France and NATO shipping depleted uranium weaponry into Ukraine? As this article will demonstrate, the preponderance of evidence strongly indicates that they are doing this. …
The MILAN is a product of Euromissile, a Franco-German missile development program dating back to the 1960s. The system entered service in 1972 as a second generation anti-tank guided missile, and soon became a standard anti-tank weapon throughout NATO, in use by most of the alliance’s individual armies.
With its rather short range (2000 meters), it is an old anti-tank guided missile (ATGM), and is known for its depleted uranium contents.
To put things into perspective, it is important to be aware that between 1986 and 2003, European armies such as the Italian Army’s combat units, were equipped with MILAN shoulder-fired anti-tank missiles, which emitted thorium-232, a notoriously radioactive metal which emits particles that are six times more hazardous to human health than those released by already hazardous depleted uranium. …
The use of depleted uranium weapons is again causing concern. I am saying this with the people of Serbia and Kosovo in mind, who discovered that the conflict which ended in 1999-2000 had left serious levels of radioactive contamination, just as it did in Kuwait some nine years before.
Why do the United States and NATO allies continue to use a waste product of the nuclear industry in their weapons? Some commentators allege that it is a conspiracy between the military and the nuclear industry to dispose of dangerous waste in hostile countries. While this may be partly true, the real reasons are certainly more complex.
As we speak, depleted uranium munitions are being fired on a regular basis at one of France’s military testing grounds, known as Canjuers. Many French soldiers have reported on the danger associated with the MILAN anti-tank guided missile. The following is the kind of comment you will hear from soldiers using it:
“Depleted uranium, we use it everyday in Canjuers” – they said “Do not come near the target, it is contaminated with depleted uranium, this is dangerous” (soldier explaining what the officer told them when training with Milan missiles in Canjuers). …
Ukraine has recently received American, but also French military support which includes thousands of Javelin anti-tank missiles. All the data presented by the Ukrainian military confirms that these Javelins have depleted uranium warheads. The missile and its launcher – the Command Launch Unit – together weigh 48.8 pounds, while the missile alone weighs 33 pounds, due to the extreme density and weight of DU material. …
We thought it would be unfair to not mention the British government, who out of the kindness of their heart have donated thousands of Next Generation Light Anti-Tank Weapon (NLAW) anti-tank guided missiles (ATGM) to Ukraine.
This missile system weighs 12.5 kg each, and has a range of no more than 1 kilometre. These features indicate that these missiles (made by Sweden’s leading defense contractor Saab Bofors, and manufactured in Ireland) include a substantial amount of depleted uranium. Given its density, even relatively small quantities of DU would add significant mass to a missile, greatly curtailing its range, but with the added benefit of its armor penetrating ability.
These missiles explode above the tank to spray it with DU together with the surroundings.
We now know that there have likely been at least 8 shipments of these missiles sent. “Thousands” of NLAWs have been promised, meaning thousands of kilograms of depleted uranium has already entered Ukraine. …
While we were initially focusing on France’s DU weaponry being shipped into Ukraine, it’s clear that other countries, including the US, UK, Sweden, and possibly Germany – are also trafficking vast amounts of deadly depleted uranium products into that country. By the time this latest war is over, it is very likely that the amount of DU material released in Ukraine may surpass levels seen in the Yugoslavian War, and the Iraq wars. … ‘
Kurt Vonnegut: And so it goes…
“Uranium eventually decays into lead…”
… and how long is eventually?
Interesting point:
Putin says Germany remains “occupied”
March 14 (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin said Germany’s response to the explosion on North Sea pipelines showed that the country remained “occupied” and unable to act independently decades after its surrender at the end of World War Two.
Putin, interviewed on Russian television, also said European leaders had been browbeaten into losing their sense of sovereignty and independence.
Western countries, including Germany, have reacted cautiously to investigations into the blasts which hit Russia’s Nord Stream gas pipelines last year, saying they believe they were a deliberate act, but declining to say who they think was responsible.
“The matter is that European politicians have said themselves publicly that after World War Two, Germany was never a fully sovereign state,” Russian news agencies quoted Putin as telling state Rossiya-1 TV channel.
“The Soviet Union at one point withdrew its forces and ended what amounted to an occupation of the country. But that, as is well known, was not the case with the Americans. They continue to occupy Germany.”
Putin told the interviewer that the blasts were carried out on a “state level” and dismissed as “complete nonsense” suggestions that an autonomous pro-Ukraine group was responsible.
The pipelines were intended to bring Russian gas to Germany, though since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine a year ago Berlin has taken steps to reduce its reliance on Russian hydrocarbons.
Leaders in Berlin have been careful about apportioning blame for the explosions, with Defence Minister Boris Pistorius saying last week the blasts could have been a “false-flag operation to blame Ukraine”.
See: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-says-germany-remains-occupied-2023-03-14/