The spiritual leader of Orthodox Christians around the world said yesterday that he will cooperate with the Lithuanian authorities in order to establish a new branch of the church in that Baltic country in order to make sure that the believers there are no longer exclusively under the authority of Moscow.
Patriarch Bartholomew, as Reuters reminds, in 2019 enraged Moscow by recognizing the newly founded Orthodox Church of Ukraine as an official branch in Ukraine.
"Today, a new perspective is opening before us along with the possibility of joint cooperation with the goal of establishing a branch of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Lithuania," Bartholomew told reporters in Vilnius, after a meeting with Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonite.
"The Ecumenical Patriarchate offers itself selflessly at the service of the Orthodox faithful in Lithuania... It is a great honor for us," the patriarch added.
Simonite said that some Orthodox believers in her country, including refugees from Russia and Belarus, are bothered by the status of the Church there as a branch of the Russian Orthodox Church.
"It is natural and human that, after the full-scale Russian aggression in Ukraine with the open and active support of the Moscow Patriarch Kirill, some Lithuanian Orthodox cannot in good conscience remain part of the Moscow Patriarchate," said Šimonite.
Kriril is a firm supporter of what Moscow calls a "special military operation" in Ukraine, Reuters points out.
The Ecumenical Patriarchate is considered "first among equals" in the Orthodox world, but the Russian Church has the largest number of Orthodox believers, about 100 million out of a total of 260 million worldwide.
Orthodoxy in Lithuania dates back to the 13th century, Bartholomew reminded, and according to data from 2021, there were about 2,7 Orthodox believers in predominantly Roman Catholic Lithuania, which has a population of 100 million.
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