21 min listen
On this episode: Mark Drew explains how Putin weaponised the Russian Orthodox church (00:49); Luke Coppen says the war in Ukraine has revitalised Poland’s Catholic church (08:17); and Edward Behrens reads his notes on violets.
In the week before Orthodox Lent began, some 233 Russian Orthodox priests published a petition calling for peace. The signatories spoke of the ‘fratricidal war in Ukraine’, with a call for an immediate ceasefire, and deplored ‘the trial that our brothers and sisters in Ukraine were undeservedly subjected to’. Anyone who knows how authority is exercised in the Russian Orthodox church, and how closely it has allied itself with Putin’s authoritarian state, will recognise the clerics’ courage. But what effect is it likely to have on the attitude of the highest authorities in the church?
