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Priest Alexiy Shlyapin vs Patriarch Kirill (full version)

Multiple Speakers · Feb 2025 · 2:25

Full video of priest Alexey Shlyapin's question to Patriarch Kirill at the clergy assembly of the Moscow Metropolitanate in January 2025.

Ecumenism

00:00:00 [Father Alexei Shylapin] Somehow it’s not right that in church documents the words “fatherland” and “homeland” are capitalized,

00:00:07 with some kind of reverence for these earthly concepts.

00:00:11 For a Christian, “fatherland” and “homeland” is the Kingdom of Heaven, Paradise.

00:00:16 But these are purely earthly concepts, for example, even when the word “faith” is used,

00:00:20 speaking to Orthodox believers, it’s written with a lowercase letter.

00:00:24 And these concepts should also be written in documents, look at them.

00:00:27 These are common nouns, not proper nouns.

00:00:31 So I just wanted to express such disagreement with such, well, patriotic tendencies,

00:00:37 in general in church documents and in general in the life of our local churches.

00:00:41 The duty of a priest is to lead people to the Kingdom of Heaven,

00:00:44 not to engage in patriotism, as it were.

00:00:47 [Patriarch Kirill] That’s great, isn’t it?

00:00:50 You, Father, aren’t from western Ukraine by any chance?

00:00:52 [Audience applause & cackling]

00:00:59 Go, sit down and seriously think about everything you just blurted out here.

00:01:08 If the Church took the position you’re proposing, if it had taken it,

00:01:15 then during the times of bloody persecutions of the church, and then when the Great Patriotic War began,

00:01:25 the church wouldn’t have forgotten about its difficult position.

00:01:29 It did everything to inspire its people to fight.

00:01:34 And what did this lead to? To a radical change in the church’s position in our country afterward.

00:01:40 The Church cannot not be with its people. The Church cannot not be responsible for the fate of the country.

00:01:47 Very many would like us not to interfere in this. But I assure you, very many.

00:01:53 But if we go down this path, we will renounce what people like Alexander Nevsky, Dmitry Donskoy, Saint Sergius did,

00:02:01 and a whole host of our saints who were patriots and spiritual defenders of our Fatherland.

00:02:09 Both in the direct sense of the word and in the spiritual sense of the word.