Archbishop of Canterbury Tells Russian Patriarch War Is ‘Never an Answer’

Justin Welby
Yui Mok-WPA Pool/Getty Images
Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D.

ROME — The Archbishop of Canterbury spoke with Russian Patriarch Kirill Wednesday, stressing the need for an end to violence in Ukraine.

Speaking via video conference, Archbishop Justin Welby told the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia of his “grave concern” over the war in Ukraine, which he called a “great tragedy,” the archbishop’s office reported in a statement.

Archbishop Welby also stressed the need for “an end to the violence in Ukraine,” adding that “war and violence is never an answer,” the statement said.

We need to find ways “to live as neighbours in Europe without the aggression and human suffering which have been too much part of our life and history,” Welby declared.

The archbishop also said Christian churches “must be united in following the great call of Jesus Christ on his disciples to be peacemakers, to do what we can to enable politicians to do their work of establishing the freedom and rights of all people in Ukraine.”

Welby spoke of the need for a ceasefire and appealed to Patriarch Kirill, an active supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin, to join him in publicly speaking out for peace.

The archbishop offered his services and those of the Church of England to assist in supporting refugees.

Both leaders agreed on the need to achieve “a lasting peace based on justice as soon as possible,” though they clearly diverge in their understanding of what such a peace would look like.

Patriarch Kirill has backed Russian president Vladimir Putin throughout the conflict, lending further credibility to the Russian Orthodox Church’s reputation as a tool of the government. Kirill has also been credibly accused of direct collusion with the KGB.

Ion Mihai Pacepa — the former head of Communist Romania’s secret police and the Cold War’s most important defector to the West — wrote in 2015 that Kirill worked for the KGB for decades and had successfully infiltrated the World Council of Churches (WCC).

“The man who is now the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, secretly worked for the KGB under the code name ‘Mikhailov’ and spent four decades promoting liberation theology, which we at the top of the Eastern European intelligence community nicknamed Christianized Marxism,” Pacepa wrote.

In 1975, the KGB “was able to infiltrate Kirill into the Central Committee of the WCC — a position he held until he was ‘elected’ patriarch of Russia, in 2009,” Pacepa wrote. “Not long after he joined the Central Committee, Kirill reported to the KGB: ‘Now the agenda of the WCC is also our agenda.’”

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