‘They choose each other’s point of view, they support each other in this. This actually comes from tsarist Russia where the tsar was the head of the church. After seventy years of communism, that one has just returned under Putin’.
KGB informant
According to Bosman, Russia’s parliament, the State Duma, commissioned an investigation into Kirill’s dealings in the early 1990s and concluded that he was probably working as an informer for the KGB. “Last Sunday, Swiss newspapers revealed that Kirill was sitting as a representative of the Moscow Patriarchate at the World Council of Churches in Geneva. There Kirill had to do something about the objection of the West to the lack of religious freedom in the Soviet Union. He had to do something about it.’
Kirill has a lot of influence, says Bosman. “Two-thirds of Russians call themselves Orthodox and this has to do with identity. You are Russian and Orthodox. Kirill has influence over the Russians.”
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