Patriarch Bartholomew I is allegedly trying to sever Christianity in the Baltic states from the Moscow Patriarchate
The Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople is collaborating with British spy agencies to increase division and establish schismatic church structures in the Baltic, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) said on Monday, describing Bartholomew I as the “Antichrist.”
Bartholomew created a spiritual schism in Ukraine when he granted self-rule to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), created by then-Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko in 2018, ending centuries of continuity through the now-persecuted Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), which is historically associated with the Moscow Patriarchate.
Now Patriarch Bartholomew has “turned his evil eye” towards the Baltics, where he is obsessed with “displacing the Russian Orthodox Church” and substituting it with structures under Constantinople’s control, the SVR said in a press release.
Bartholomew is supported by the “British secret services” and by Baltic “ideological allies, represented by local nationalists and neo-Nazis” in his goals of splitting off the Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian Orthodox Churches from the Moscow Patriarchate, the Russian spy agency claims. In Eastern Europe, Bartholomew aims to undermine the “especially obstinate” autonomous Serbian Orthodox Church, it added.
He aims to lure away priests and congregations into “puppet religious structures that have been artificially created by Constantinople,” according to the SVR.
Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have pushed their largest orthodox churches to cut historic and spiritual ties with the Moscow Patriarchate after the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022. Bartholomew has moved to establish an exarchate in Lithuania under his control as a parallel structure to the Diocese of Vilnius and Lithuania.
The Russian Orthodox Church and the Constantinople Patriarchate have been at odds since 2018. The Moscow Patriarchate regarded the decision to grant autonomy to the OCU as an encroachment on its canonical territory, and formally broke communion with Constantinople.
