Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced the involvement of the United States in the ongoing crisis in Orthodoxy. Lavrov said this during a big press conference on January 14, reports kp.ru.
“The United States of America directly had a hand in the current crisis in Orthodoxy,” Lavrov said and described the mechanism of Washington’s action in this direction.
“They had formed a special mechanism – a special representative for freedom of religion, who in fact was not engaged in freedom, but actively set up and financed Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople so that he would pursue a line towards a split, including in Ukraine, first of all, towards the creation there is a schismatic non-canonical Orthodox Church of Ukraine,” Lavrov said, noting that such actions by the United States caused “the most serious differences in the Orthodox world as a whole.”
Lavrov said that the governments of countries where Orthodox churches are located should not regulate their functioning.