Le Matin Dimanche and Sonntagszeitung, two Swiss publications, say the police have verified that the top of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, was once a member of the KGB.
The two media shops have been in a position to seek the advice of information throughout the Swiss federal archives.
In the early Nineteen Seventies, the patriarch, who fervently helps Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, was once dwelling in Geneva and formally represented Moscow on the World Council of Churches (WCC).
Kirill’s venture was once additionally to persuade this council, which was once infiltrated by means of the KGB within the Nineteen Seventies and 80s.
The function of the Soviets was once to get the Geneva establishment to denounce the United States and its allies, and to average its criticisms of the loss of spiritual freedom within the USSR, the newspapers famous.
It additionally stressed out that the Russian Church “refused to comment on Kirill’s espionage activities in Geneva”.
For its section, the World Council of Churches mentioned it had “no information” at the matter. Le Matin Dimanche interviewed the patriarch’s nephew, Mikhail Goundiaev, who succeeded him as a consultant of the Moscow patriarchate in Geneva. But he mentioned that his uncle “was not an agent, even if he was subject to the KGB’s ‘strict control”.
And this didn’t “affect the sincerity of his commitment to ecumenical work with other churches,” he instructed the newspaper.
The newsletter additionally reported that Patriarch Kirill is especially keen on Switzerland.
“He has visited Switzerland at least 43 times,” the Le Matin Dimanche mentioned, including that “in addition to his passion for skiing – in 2007 he broke his leg on a Swiss slope – religious diplomacy, espionage and financial matters have constantly brought Kirill back to the Alps or to the shores of Lake Geneva.
“I’ve particular emotions against your nation. Of all of the nations on this planet, it’s possibly the only I’ve visited maximum incessantly,” the patriarch defined in 2019 when he gained the President of the Swiss Council of States, Jean-René Fournier, in Moscow.
