Metropolitan Agafangel: The Moscow Patriarchate is not the Church of Christ — yet another confirmation

Metropolitan Agafangel | July 14, 2025

 

The head of the Moscow Patriarchate, Patriarch Kirill, in his speech on July 12, 2025, at the St. Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg, suddenly showered the dictator and murderer Putin with especially obsequious compliments, blasphemously calling him “an Orthodox man,” who is: “Not some random parishioner mimicking the religion of the majority, but a church-going man, sincerely believing. Could we have thought or dreamed of this? We could not. But the Lord brought everything to the point that we now have what we have.”

Lord, have mercy on us who read these blasphemous words! — more than a million innocent people killed and maimed (many of whom were Orthodox), numerous ancient Orthodox Slavic cities and settlements completely destroyed along with their churches and holy sites, a cult of war and mass murder, persecution of those who dare to simply speak out against the war. And all this by the will of one dictator and his circle, and with the blessing of the patriarch of the MP! In Rus’ they used to say: “When God wants to punish a man, He takes away his reason.” Regarding the actions of Kirill Gundyaev and his inner circle, one may say this: “When the devil wishes to destroy a man, he silences his conscience.”

Patriarch Kirill, hypocritically expressing amazement at the “revival” of Orthodoxy in the Russian Federation, asks: “How can this be? Could it really be that the old women who remained believers broke the power of a superpower? Why did the atheistic regime collapse overnight?” The point is precisely that the God-fighting regime did not collapse, but only outwardly mimicked change without inner repentance. Having destroyed everything spiritually priceless that existed on our land, it then appropriated the external appearance of these values — Russian history, symbolism, even the very name “Russian,” and, the Holy of Holies — the Orthodox Church. Having destroyed and eradicated the true Church, it replaced it with Stalin’s false church, which is only outwardly a church, but inwardly is abomination and the desolation of corruption — as was always pointed out by many representatives of the ROCOR, among whom were the Russian philosopher Ivan Ilyin and our holy First Hierarch, Metropolitan Philaret (Voznesensky).

The Church is only the True Church when it is free and speaks with its native, motherly voice — a voice independent of anyone except Christ. One can recall Metropolitans Philip of Moscow and Arseny (Matseyevich), Patriarch Nikon, and the last All-Russian Patriarch Tikhon — this is the true voice of the Russian Church, unafraid to speak Christ’s truth in the face of civil authority (and suffering at the hands of that authority), a voice fundamentally different from the flattery and servility before evil that emanates from the current leadership of the MP. The Moscow false church now speaks exclusively with the voice alien to Christ — the voice of the Kremlin tyrant Putin — blasphemously passing it off as the voice of Christ Himself.

Looking at what is happening, one must sorrowfully acknowledge that Russian "institutional" Orthodoxy has ceased to exist — first losing its freedom in Christ under Metropolitan Sergius Stragorodsky, and finally ceasing its spiritual existence under Kirill Gundyaev. To great regret, within the Moscow Patriarchate there are no longer any forces capable of bringing back to Christ what was once a part of the Russian Church, but has now become a servile political institution, serving a criminal regime “not out of fear, but out of conviction.”

Of course, in Ukraine the current authorities are also hostile to Orthodoxy in their unwillingness to return to the foundations of the Orthodox Ukrainian Hetmanate, even though its presidents take the oath on the Gospel and receive the hetman’s mace — but this, unfortunately, remains only an external formality, without any inner substance. The last Orthodox Ukrainian Hetman, Pavlo Skoropadskyi [+1945], was overthrown, and sadly, there is no one to revive his cause today. However, it must be acknowledged that the authorities in Ukraine do not attempt to intrude into a person’s soul and dictate, as the Soviet power once did and still does, and therefore the apolitical Church of Christ is much freer here than in the Russian Federation. Those currently subjected to persecution, under the conditions of war, are the supporters and “collaborators” of the war criminal Kirill Gundyaev, who blesses mass killings and violence in Ukraine. It could not be otherwise — and should not be. It is only a pity that the authorities in Ukraine do not distinguish between the supporters of the current politicized Moscow false patriarch and the ordinary faithful, who are sincerely innocent and believe they are suffering for their faith. Unfortunately, they are not suffering for the Orthodox faith, but for their loyalty to the evil of their church leadership. May God grant that all Orthodox people in Ukraine — and in the Russian Federation — “come to the knowledge of the Truth”!

Canon 15 of the First-Second Council states: “Those who separate themselves from communion with their prelate on account of some heresy condemned by the Holy Councils or Fathers (if he publicly preaches heresy and openly teaches it in the churches) not only are not subject to the penalties prescribed by the canons for separating themselves before a synodal decision, but are worthy of the honor due to the Orthodox. For they did not condemn bishops, but pseudo-bishops and pseudo-teachers, and did not cut the unity of the Church with schism, but strove to deliver the Church from schisms and divisions.”

Based on the very spirit of this Canon, all Christians should as soon as possible cease all communion with Kirill Gundyaev; otherwise, the evil that proceeds from him will pass on to those who remain in ecclesiastical unity with him — that is, to all who are in Eucharistic communion with the Moscow Patriarchate.

If someone thinks that there is no heresy in the actions of Kirill Gundyaev — then neither was there heresy in the betrayal of Judas, nor in the actions of Metropolitan Sergius Stragorodsky, who betrayed the Church into the hands of God-fighters; what there was, was apostasy from God without heresy, which is far more terrifying than heresy, which is often the result of mere error. But in the aforementioned speech of Kirill Gundyaev there is also undeniable heresy, when he claims that “in mosques they turn to God” — but to Christ God? There is your heresy.

 

Russian source:

http://internetsobor.org/index.php/stati/avtorskaya-kolonka/mitropolit-agafangel-moskovskaya-patriarkhiya-ne-tserkov-khristova-ocherednoe-podtverzhdenie