The World Council of Churches is under pressure to oust the Russian Orthodox Church from its ranks, with detractors arguing the church’s leader, Patriarch Kirill, invalidated its membership by backing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and involving the church in the global political machinations of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The debate garnered a response on Monday from Rev Ioan Sauca, acting general secretary of the WCC, which claims 352 member churches representing roughly 580 million Christians around the world.
Sauca, a priest in the Romanian Orthodox Church who has visited Ukrainian refugees and publicly criticised Kirill’s response to the invasion, pushed back on the suggestion of expelling the ROC, arguing doing so would deviate from the WCC’s historic mission to enhance ecumenical dialogue.
“It is easy to exclude, excommunicate, demonize; but we are called as WCC to use a free and safe platform of encounter and dialogue, to meet and listen to one another even if and when we disagree,” Sauca said in a lengthy series of statements posted to the WCC website.
“This has always been the WCC, and I would suffer greatly if during my time this vocation will be lost and the nature of the WCC changes.”
But Sauca may be facing increasing headwinds as the WCC, a global Christian ecumenical group founded in 1948 in the aftermath of World War II, prepares for a major meeting of its central committee in June. With the war continuing to rage in Ukraine, where Russian forces have been accused of committing war crimes against civilians, a growing chorus of Christian voices is questioning whether the WCC should cut ties with what is seen as a complicit ROC.
Read the article by Jack Jenkins in Sight Magazine.