An Orthodox Awakening

For years, the two leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church with whom Pope Francis met by videoconference on March 16 -- Kirill, Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus', and Metropolitan Hilarion, the Church's chief ecumenical officer -- have worked to buttress Vladimir Putin's efforts to reconstitute a simulacrum of the Soviet Union in the name of a Russkiy mir ("Russian world"). Kirill and Hilarion's efforts have run the gamut from falsifying the history of Eastern Slavic Christianity to the virtual beatification of President Putin as a figure providentially ordained to save the world from Western decadence and "liberalism." Most recently, Kirill blasphemously blessed a war of aggression with holy icons.