ROME — Kirill, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, reassured his compatriots Sunday that Russia is proceeding on the right path in its aggression against Ukraine and deserves “very strong cohesion and consolidation.”
The patriarch urged Russians to let their internal dissentions fade into the background and be replaced by solidarity and support for the nation in the face of hostility from outside.
“God willing, our spiritual strength shouldn’t wane, so that we shouldn’t have any fears and any feeling of uncertainty about our historical development,” Kirill said in a meeting with Church and state officials in Gelendzhik, a Russian resort town on the Black Sea in the southern Krasnodar Territory.
“Everything that’s happening now is happening the right way, although our way is not easy,” he assured his hearers.
“I mean not only what’s happening inside but also what’s happening on the outer perimeter,” the patriarch specified. “And all of this requires very strong cohesion and consolidation of all strengths of our people.”
“Dissentions that exist in any society between what was earlier called classes, although now we don’t use this word and say different walks of society, should go to the background, because solidarity of all the people in front of tangible threats should come to the foreground,” he added.
“Russia, with its faith, with its philosophy of life, if you will, with its absolute decency is a challenge to a very substantial part of the powerful world, where people follow different laws,” he said.
The patriarch said he could experience this particularly in the Krasnodar Territory and thanked the locals for preserving faith, patriotism, and loyalty to their homeland.
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