Events

MINSK, 22 June (BelTA) – Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill thanked Belarus for the role in organizing the talks on the regulation of the situation in Ukraine at the meeting with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on 20 June, BelTA has learned.

Patriarch Kirill stressed that it is great pain for him to listen to the news about the situation in fraternal Ukraine. “It is a wound in the heart. Among Orthodox believers are people from the East and from the West. It lays great responsibility on the church,” the Patriarch said. “At present our church is the only organization in Ukraine which preserved its peace-making potential because it does not take the side of either party,” the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church said.

Patriarch Kirill said that it is impossible to divide believers using political principles. Both sides are Orthodox people who are suffering and dying, he noted.