With feelings of deep grief and disappointment, the Volos Academy for Theological Studies is watching the tragedy taking place in Ukraine. Without being the first or the only war which constitutes a gross violation of any notion of law and that lacks any moral legitimacy, this war demands today from us its moral condemnation not only for its inhuman results, but also because, to a great degree, it is theoretically grounded in the theologically condemnable ideology of the "Russian world", being another bitter fruit of the authoritarian regime of Russia. These days the bombs of the powerful desecrate the birthplace of Slavic Orthodoxy and the waters of the Dnieper River, where the Russians were baptized more than a thousand years ago. Weapons send innocent people to their deaths, creating pain, orphans and a vast flow of refugees.

Maintaining close ties with Ukrainian academic institutions, theologians, clergy and the faithful for a long time, the Volos Academy for Theological Studies is anxious for its loved ones to whom it expresses its full solidarity and support. The Volos Academy is equally in solidarity with the persecuted voices inside Russia, either clergy or laity who, with boldness, Christian self-denial and personal risk, denounce the crime being committed in Ukraine. These voices remind us that Russia is a country of countless saints and great figures of theology, art and letters, without which European culture would be unthinkable. Their homeland deserves a better, more democratic and more genuine Christian future.

The Volos Academy prays for an immediate ceasefire and peace. Being the first theological institution in Greece to receive Ukrainian clergymen and theologians of the newly established Autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine, it expresses its love and understanding to its Prelate, His Beatitude Epiphanios, but also to the brothers and sisters that belong to the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine, as well as to anyone being persecuted or endangered, as the duty of a Christian theology, worthy of its name, is, beyond geopolitical calculations and conflicts, to stand by the side of the weak. Based on this reasoning, the Volos Academy declares that it will continue to support theologically, educationally, but also communicatively, with its modest forces, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which is threatened from a powerful and superior invader of this world. May the awareness of the common danger lead to the overcoming of the schisms and to the deepening of the unity of the Ukrainian Orthodoxy.

At the same time, the Volos Academy for Theological Studies calls His Holiness the Patriarch Kirill of Moscow to rise to the occasion, even now, not only by exerting his influence on the Russian President for the immediate end of the war, but also by generally practicing a prophetic role that is naturally expected from the Prelate of a Church surrounded by the history of many saints who resolutely opposed injustice and tyranny. Now is the time to act.

Moreover, in the face of this inconceivable global crisis, we expect the Russian Church to stop the divisive actions of the Orthodox world, led by His Eminence Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, with the systematic polemic direct against the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. We particularly abhor the uncanonical invasion of the Moscow Patriarchate into the traditional canonical territory of the ancient Patriarchate of Alexandria, as well as the theologically problematic defense of the theory of just war. A Church of martyrs and humanitarian witness must resist its political instrumentalization, bearing witness to reconciliation. Otherwise, the Orthodox ethos, the salt and light of the Orthodox faith (Matthew 5:13-16), is discredited in the eyes of the entire world and the unity of the Church and the common witness of Orthodoxy to the globe is broken, perhaps irreparably.

May the beginning of the path of Orthodox Christianity towards Lent and Easter, towards the culmination of the encounter with the Crucified and Resurrected Lord of Life, hasten the end of the unholy celebration of death on the soil of Ukraine, being watered with the innocent blood of brothers and sisters.

In the photograph, suburbs of Kiev on March 1. Picture by Efrem Lukatsky (Associated Press)