The head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church dismissed the notion that Russia is a defender of Christian values.
“Russian propaganda is based on so-called traditional values. And the tradition they refer to is by no means Christian,” Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk said in an interview with an Italian newspaper. “They exploit family values for military purposes and preach a theology of death rather than resurrection. This has absolutely nothing to do with Christian values or God’s commandments.”
Major Archbishop Shevchuk also told Il Foglio:
An Orthodox priest who does not want to pray for the war, but prays for peace, is not merely a dissident—he is considered a heretic.
Wherein lies his fault? It lies in the fact that he does not support this ‘new theology,’ which combines elements of Christianity with the communist and Marxist ideology of the Soviet Union in the form of a new kind of religious syncretism