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Church not to be taken a hostage in a new Romanian-Moldavian aggravation

Kishinev, December 17, Interfax – Recent diplomatic conflict between Moldova and Romania can make the Orthodox Church in Moldova a chip in a current power game of Kishinev politicians, political scientist Viktor Zhosu thinks.

‘Escalation of tensions in relations with Romania is in every respect favorable for the ruling Communist party of Moldova and its leader president Vladimir Voronin. They spare no effort to engage the Kishinev and Moldavian Metropolia of the Orthodox Church in the political fuss’, Zhosu has told Interfax on Monday.

Thus, he commented on the recent diplomatic contradictions between Moldova and Romania including Moldova’s recalling its ambassador from Bucharest, deportation of two Romanian diplomats from Kishinev, after the Romanian ambassador in Kishinev had called peace treaty of 1947 regarding Romanian-Moldavian boarders a ‘historical falsification’.

Zhosu believes that Voronin in his strive to ‘play’ on the Moldavian unwillingness to unite with Romania ‘rather successfully uses anti-Romanian card in his own political and propagandistic game’.

According to him, it is evident both in political and church diplomacy, especially in the Romanian Orthodox Synod’s decision to restore three ‘historical’ dioceses of the ‘Bessarabian Metropolia’ unrecognized by the Moscow Patriarchate. And stilted phrases of the Moldavian authorities about ‘protection of our Churches’ do not change the situation, the expert believes.

‘What is the risk? Only the ‘Bessarabian Metropolia’ was considered a branch of the Moldavian People’s front before, but now Voronin’s efforts to involve the Moscow Patriarchate’s priests and bishops in politics will make them a kind of ‘advanced spiritual detachment’ of the Communist Party’, Zhosu has stated.

Only ‘energetic actions within the Kishinev and Moldavian Metropolia’ can change the situation.

‘Only re-orientation of priests and all clergy to the church problems can break the vicious cycle of politicizing the Church. In case it does not happen – neither miraculous receipts nor granting autocephaly to the Moldavian Church will help’, the interviewee of the agency believes.

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