THE acting general secretary of the World Council of Churches has said that the place of the Moscow Patriarchate in the organisation will be ‘one of the very hot issues’ at the next central committee meeting in June.

The Rev Prof Dr Ioan Sauca acknowledged in an interview on the WCC website that there had been calls to exclude the Moscow Patriarchate, under the leadership of Patriarch Kirill, over his support of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Dr Sauca, a priest in the Romanian Orthodox Church, said he could not predict the decision of the central committee, but that the decision to suspend a member church would be taken ‘only after serious discernment, hearings, visits to and dialogue with the churches concerned’.

He said that the WCC had faced similar cases in the past, including disagreements between churches over apartheid in South Africa, between churches from opposing countries during the Cold War, over some churches’ support for the 1991 Gulf War and churches involved in the genocide in Rwanda and the Balkan War in the 1990s.

In no case had the WCC decided to suspend a church from membership, although some had excluded themselves.

Dr Sauca said: “Things are very complicated these days and we live in a turning point of history. As many others, I suffer a lot, in particular as an Orthodox priest since I am aware that both in Russia and in Ukraine the Orthodox Churches have great numbers of faithful. And the tragic events, the great suffering, death and destruction are in deep contradiction with Orthodox theology and spirituality, with what our forefathers and mothers have showed us through their personal lives in history.

“I did my best to be bold and prophetic:

I condemned the Russian aggression on Ukraine. Supporting the statement of Metropolitan Onuphry, I called it a ‘fratricidal war’ and expressed concern and care for the victims, refugees and so much suffering and destruction. I wrote to Patriarch Kirill, I called the two presidents to stop the war and a WCC delegation visited the borders of Ukraine from Hungary and Romania and met with the refugees.

“We all feel hopeless, angry, frustrated, disappointed – and humanly and emotionally tend to go towards immediate radical decisions.

“Yet, as followers of Christ, we were entrusted with the ministry of reconciliation and the theme of the WCC 11th Assembly reminds us all that the love of Christ moves the whole world to reconciliation and unity.

“I believe in the power of dialogue in the process towards reconciliation. Imposed peace is not peace; a lasting peace has to be a just peace. War cannot be just or holy; killing is killing and that has to be avoided through dialogue and negotiations. And to reach that it is not enough to stop the conflicts but to try to understand the root and the causes and that can happen only through dialogue, by listening first to the victim and then the perpetrator. And I still believe that even the perpetrator can be changed, transformed by the power of dialogue and the work of the grace of God, by assuming the faults and wrongdoings, by repairing the damages and by advancing towards the way of just peace.

It may sound idealistic and utopic when we are confronted with strong signs of war crimes, but our Holy Scriptures and our history give us many such examples. We have to continue on the path of our faith with hope.”

(WCC)