Appeal for president to demote head of Polish Orthodox church over letter to Russian patriarch

After the head of Poland’s Orthodox church sent congratulations to his Russian counterpart, who has been a supporter of the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine, a group of former anti-communist activists have appealed to the president for the bishop to be stripped of his military rank.

Metropolitan Sawa has since 1998 been the primate of Poland’s second-largest religious denomination, the Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church, which had around 156,000 members in 2011, according to that year’s census. The church’s own figures, from 2021, suggest it has 500,000 followers.

At the start of February, a letter from Sawa to Patriarch Kirill of Moscow was published, in which the Polish prelate congratulated his Russian counterpart on the 14th anniversary of the latter’s enthronement.

“During your patriarchal service, the Russian Orthodox Church has shone with spiritual revival through the labours of Your Holiness, serving as an example for others,” wrote Sawa.

“The enemy of the faith does not like the stability of the church, he tries to destroy it. What happened in Ukraine testifies to this,” the letter continued. “However, the power of God is invincible. We deeply believe that the evil that destroys the divine church organism will be destroyed by the conqueror of death and hell, Christ.”

The bishop’s letter sparked anger in Poland, where support for Ukraine and anger towards Russia are strong. A few days later, Sawa sought to play down the issue, saying the letter was just a “customary message…sent only to comply with protocol”.

He noted that he “has condemned the criminal invasion of independent Ukraine by Russia” and that last March he called on Kirill and the Russian authorities for its cessation. Sawa then appealed “to all my countrymen: forgive me, a sinner”.

That was not enough, however, for a group of former activists who fought against Poland’s former Soviet-backed communist regime. They have jointly called on President Andrzej Duda to demote Sawa, who holds the military rank of brigadier general after serving as the Orthodox military ordinariate of the Polish armed forces.

According to them, Sawa’s letter to Kirill is “in fact a political declaration towards Ukraine, [which is] fighting for independence against the Russian invader”. The bishop “indicates unequivocally and without any doubt whose interests he represents”.

They argue that it “dishonours” Polish soldiers for Sawa to continue to hold such senior rank, and called for him to be demoted to private. The signatories also claim Sawa has been “for years been hostile towards an independent Poland and on the side of first the Soviet Union and currently Russia”.

After Poland regained full independence in 1989, archival records indicated that Sawa had for over two decades been a collaborator of the communist security services, providing information on his own and other religious groups.

Although the president’s office has yet to publicly respond to the anti-communist activists, a deputy leader of the ruling Law and justice (PiS) party, former defence minister Antoni Macierewicz, told the Polish Press Agency (PAP)  that the archbishop’s words were “unacceptable and there must be some military consequences”.

However, under current Polish law, a soldier can only be demoted on the basis of a final court judgment, notes PAP.

Meanwhile, another Orthodox clergyman in Poland, the archbishop of Przemyśl and Gorlice, has won praise after he used the upcoming first anniversary of the war to call for the faithful to pray for peace but also for the defeat of Russia.

“It was not Ukraine that started the war, but it was started by the aggressor Putin,” he wrote, quoted by local news service Bielsk.eu. “Our Lord Jesus Christ said: ‘All who draw the sword will die by the sword.'”

Main photo credit: Kremlin.ru (under CC BY 3.0)

Alicja Ptak

Alicja Ptak is senior editor at Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She previously worked for Reuters.