Patriarch Kirill, loyal Kremlin cleric facing sanctions

Patriarch Kirill, the leader of Russia’s Orthodox Church, is a staunch admirer of President Vladimir Putin, who reportedly called his rule a “miracle.”

The 75-year-old Kirill, a major component of Putin’s power machinery, has championed traditional Christian principles and bolstered the Kremlin’s authoritarian tendencies by criticizing opposition protests.

He has recently praised Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine, rallying people to combat Moscow’s “foreign and domestic foes.”

In February, he warned of a battle against “evil forces” hostile to Russia and Ukraine’s historic “union.”

His comments have drawn a rebuke from Pope Francis, who told Kirill in a video meeting in March that religious leaders “must not use the language of politics, but the language of Jesus.”

Francis later revealed that a planned meeting between the two men in Jerusalem in June had been canceled.

According to a document seen by AFP, the European Commission has suggested adding Kirill to a new list of 58 persons sanctioned for Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine.

Kirill has been a staunch supporter of Putin since he was elected to the country’s highest post in 2009.

In 2012, Kirill referred to Putin’s administration as a “miracle of God” that resolved the 1990s economic hardship caused by the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

“You, Vladimir Vladimirovich, personally played a massive role in correcting this crooked twist of our history,” he said using the president’s patronymic.

Kirill, like Putin and numerous other important members of Russia’s governing elite, is a native of Saint Petersburg, Russia’s old imperial capital.

Unlike his grandfather, a priest who was deported for three decades to Stalinist work camps, Kirill, who was born in 1946, ascended swiftly through the church levels, eventually becoming head of external affairs and receiving his own television program centered on religious concepts.

When Kirill took over as patriarch, he had already become a household name, overseeing the religious lives of more than 110 million adherents.

On television, he suggested an ambitious plan to revitalize the Church’s image, which had stagnated during the Soviet Union’s state-mandated atheism, and to extend its involvement in state institutions like schools and the army. He made that idea a reality as a patriarch.

Kirill instilled Orthodox ideals in daily life, culminating in a reference to God in a new constitution enacted in 2020 – a collection of rules that permitted Putin to potentially continue in power until 2036.

He has been a key advocate for Russia’s rising conservatism, opposing same-sex marriage and labeling homosexuality a sin.

Kirill’s Church has also praised Russian efforts to persecute religious minorities. When lawmakers outlawed the Jehovah’s Witnesses in 2017, a Church official called the organization a “totalitarian cult” that sought to “damage people’s psyches and ruin families.”

Kirill’s Christ the Savior Cathedral, adorned with intricate iconography and crowned with large golden onion domes, lies opposite the Kremlin’s formidable red walls, establishing an axis of church and state authority in the heart of Moscow.

From here, he presides over expensive official festivities attended by Putin and Russia’s political elite on a regular basis.

It was also the scene of the ultimate punk protest staged by Pussy Riot in 2012, in which the all-female ensemble chastised Kirill for claiming he “believes” in Putin.

Kirill called the balaclava-clad women’s performance “blasphemous,” and Pussy Riot members have been arrested and jailed several times since.

The patriarch has long been dogged by accusations of ties to the Soviet-era KGB, where Putin also worked, and of a luxurious lifestyle.

In 2012, Russian bloggers discovered a photograph in which a watch worth more than $30,000 was airbrushed off the holy leader’s wrist, but its reflection could be seen on the table.

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