The leader of the Russian Orthodox Church strolled past a row of sailors in dress uniform, boarded a nuclear submarine, and presented the crew with an icon of the Mother of God. - “You should not be ashamed of going to church and teaching the Orthodox faith to your children,” the patriarch told the Severodvinsk workers. “Then we shall have something to defend with our missiles.”
.. gefolgt von einer detaillierten und differenzierten Analyse von Kirill's Rolle, sowie historischen Bezügen:
“He is .. someone who has influence over .. education, culture, spirituality..“
But Kirill has also had his differences with the Kremlin. - In a recent interview Archbishop Hilarion, who heads the Moscow Patriarchate's Department of External Relations and is a close aide to Kirill, called the Soviet leader Josef Stalin “a spiritually deformed monster” who was “comparable to Hitler” and “unleashed a genocide against the people of his own country.”