Vilnius, September 6, 2024
ortodoksas.lt
Clergy of the Patriarchate of Constantinople’s new Lithuanian Exarchate found on September 4 that someone shot at one of their churches in Vilnius.
A window at the chapel at 4 Bokšto Street had a bullet hole and a bullet was found in the windowsill, the Exarchate reports.
Police were immediately called to the scene and have launched an investigation.
This particular chapel is used by Belarusian parishioners. “It’s currently unknown who shot at the church windows, but the incident fits into a series of recent provocations directed against the Belarusian political emigration and presumably linked to the special services of Lukashenko’s regime,” the Exarchate declares.
Constantinople’s Lithuanian Exarchate includes a number of defrocked Lithuanian clerics and others formerly of the Belarusian Orthodox Church.
The former priests maintain that they were defrocked for their anti-war stance, though, this is in fact the same stance taken by the entire diocese.
The Exarchate has tried to argue that the Lithuanian Diocese’s stance is too general to have any subtance. However, in March 2022, Met. Innokenty stated explicitly:
The position of the Orthodox Church in Lithuania is unchanged—we strongly condemn Russia’s war against Ukraine and pray to God for its speedy end. As you have probably already noticed, Patriarch Kirill and I have different political views and perceptions of current events. His political statements about the war in Ukraine are his personal opinion. We in Lithuania do not agree with this.
The Assembly of clerical, monastic, and lay representatives that met in December 2022 likewise stated that “the Lithuanian Orthodox Church immediately condemned the war against Ukraine at all levels—the hierarchy, clergy and laity, and expressed its full support for the anti-war position of its primate, Metropolitan Innokenty of Vilnius and Lithuania.”
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