ANTALYA, Turkey — Standing in an old Orthodox church in Antalya with a Bible in one hand and a candle in the other, the Rev. Ioann Koval led one of his first services in Turkey after Russian Orthodox Church leadership decided to defrock him following his prayer for peace in Ukraine.
Last September, when President Vladimir Putin ordered a partial mobilization of reservists, Moscow Patriarch Kirill required his clergymen to pray for victory. Standing in front of the altar and dozens of his parishioners in one of Moscow’s churches, Koval decided to put the peace above the patriarch’s orders.
“With the word ‘victory’ the prayer acquired a propagandistic meaning, shaping the correct thinking among the parishioners, among the clergy, what they should think about and how they should see these hostilities,” Koval said. “It went against my conscience. I couldn’t submit to this political pressure from the hierarchy.”
In the prayer he recited multiple times, the 45-year-old priest changed just one word, replacing “victory” with “peace” — but it was enough for the church court to remove his priestly rank.
Publicly praying or calling for peace also poses risks of prosecution from the Russian state. Shortly after Russian troops invaded Ukraine, lawmakers passed legislation that allowed prosecuting thousands of people for “discrediting the Russian army,” a charge that in reality applies to anything that contradicts the official narrative, be it a commentary on social networks or a prayer in church.
Similar to Putin’s authoritarian regime, Kirill built a harsh hierarchy in the church that demands total conformity, Andrey Desnitsky, professor of philology at Vilnius University in Lithuania, told The Associated Press. If a priest refuses to read the patriarch’s prayer, his loyalty is suspect.
“If you are not loyal, then there is no place for you in church,” added Desnitsky, a longtime expert on the Russian church.
Russian President Vladimir Putin…
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