MOSCOW, November 20. /TASS/. The schisms and contradictions that have been creating difficulties for maintaining the unity of the Orthodox Church are not initiated by local churches, they are masterminded by certain political forces, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill said during a liturgy service at Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral on Wednesday.

"I would like to thank the episcopacy, the clergy and the faithful for the tremendous support that I feel when making difficult decisions on remedying the schism, divisions and contradictions that have been creating huge difficulties of late for maintaining the unity of the Orthodox Church, and have been certainly prompted by the devil who always acts through people, and most often not through Church people," the patriarch said.

"The things we are seeing today were not initiated by Church leaders, but by forces outside the Church," he stressed. There are certain ideas in the world that the Church acts as ‘a soft force’. "And for some reason, some political adversaries of Russia have always been greatly concerned about the Russian Church, posing the question: aren’t Russia’s relations with members of the same religion, chiefly the Greek people, and the Greek patriarchate, too close?", he stressed.

"We know that instructions were handed down to put the Russian and the Greek Orthodox worlds on a collision course. That is why, the things that we are seeing now are not the result of certain initiatives coming from the churches, this happens because some churches have failed to withstand such pressure, and this is what church representatives plainly tell me - that pressure is being put on us, that we have been coerced," the patriarch pointed out.

He hoped that schisms in the Orthodox Church would soon end, and urged all believers to strengthen the unity of faith. "In response to these divisions, to these attempts to sever relations between the local Orthodox churches, we must strengthen our internal unity, and as long as it remains flawless, we will have the strength to resist any attempts from outside to disunite the universal Orthodox Christianity," Patriarch Kirill emphasized.

On October 12, the Archbishops’ Council of the Orthodox Church of Greece recognized the right of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople to grant autocephaly to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which the Russian Orthodox Church does not recognize as a canonical church. The Orthodox Church of Ukraine, created on the basis of two uncanonical organizations - the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate - received autocephaly in 2018 by a decision made by Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople. The other Orthodox churches did not declare that they recognized the newly-established ecclesiastical organization as a canonical one.

Patriarch Bartholomew’s decision to grant autocephaly to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine was the reason why the Russian Orthodox Church on October 15, 2018 severed full communion with the Patriarchate of Constantinople.

On October 17, 2019 the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church ordered to "sever prayer and Eucharist communion with whose hierarchs of the Greek Church that have entered or will enter into such communion with representatives of the Ukrainian uncanonical schismatic groups." The Holy Synod authorized Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia to cease commemoration of the name of the Greek Orthodox Church’s primate in case the latter takes any steps indicating that he recognizes the Ukrainian church’s autocephaly.