Western government’s condemned a military coup in Niger last week which prompted speculation about widening Russian influence in Africa, including through dioceses of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Speaking at Russia-Africa summit in St Petersburg, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow insisted that his Church’s presence “on African soil is not an unprecedented innovation”.
He claimed that it had been forced to found new dioceses by the conduct of the Alexandria patriarchate which traditionally has jurisdiction on the continent.
“The Patriarch of Alexandria, dragging behind the chariot of certain Western powers, decided under external pressure to recognise schismatic groups in Ukraine – and these sad circumstances prompted our church to create its own patriarchal exarchate,” Kirill claimed.
The event was attended by 17 heads of state as well as by Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose mercenary Wagner Group is active in several African countries.
This followed the announcement of the coup in Niger’s capital Niamey on 26 July, which deposed its first democratically-elected president. A missionary based there reported “calm in the streets” as citizens await developments.
Fr Mauro Armanino, missionary of the Society of African Missions, noted that Niger is a security partner of France and the US, which both use it as a base to fight an Islamist insurgency in the Sahel region.
A military government has detained President Mohamed Bazoum in his residence and claims to have, seized power “to put an end to bad socio-economic governance and to the country's security situation”.
The coup in Niger has been widely condemned by neighbours and international partners including the US, the United Nations, the European Union and France.
Last Sunday, the West African regional bloc ECOWAS gave the mutineers one week to reinstate the ousted president or face sanctions and the possible use of force.
Supporters of the coup waved Russian flags, while at the St Petersburg summit Prigozhin praised it as a “struggle against colonisers”.
Russia is supporting various groups in Mali, Uganda, Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo and other countries in Africa, while the Moscow patriarchate has introduced its own structures to the continent.
Speaking in St Petersburg, Kirill insisted that Russian parishes had functioned in Abyssinia and across North Africa in the early twentieth century, adding that he had personally dedicated a Russian Orthodox church in South Africa in 1998.
Patriarch Theodore II of Alexandria issued a statement last week accusing Kirill of “consciously ripping Christ's seamless robe to pieces” by this expansion.
“Thousands of Orthodox Christians in Africa are being spiritually poisoned by the Moscow patriarchate's predatory and impudent invasion,” Theodore told Serbia's Patriarch Porfirije, who has consistently backed Russian Orthodox actions, in a public rebuke.
“We regret you do not show the same sensitivity to this completely unjust, anti-ecclesiastical and anti-canonical act, and still remain silent, despite my repeated appeals.”
In December 2021, the Moscow Patriarchate announced it was setting up Russian Orthodox dioceses in Cairo and Johannesburg, under a new patriarchal exarch, Metropolitan Leonid (Gorbachev) of Klin, in retaliation for Patriarch Theodore's 2019 recognition of the independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine.
However, Orthodox leaders in Greece, Albania and elsewhere accused Moscow of using the Ukrainian conflict as a pretext for implementing pre-existing plans and of violating Orthodox principles by trespassing on the territory of the Alexandria Patriarchate, whose 35 African dioceses have roughly five million members.
Speaking at the Russia-Africa summit, the Russian Children's Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova, who is wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court for deporting Ukrainian children, said her government planned to use Russian Orthodox parishes as bases for schools, orphanages, crop schemes and humanitarian projects across Africa.
Meanwhile, Metropolitan Leonid praised Africans as the “most religious people on the planet”, adding that his new dioceses had encountered a “wave of interest” with 200 parishes now in 25 countries.
“Before our eyes, a unique historical event is taking place – the explosive growth of followers of Russian Orthodoxy on the black continent,” the exarch told a summit session.
“The Russian Orthodox Church can become, and is already becoming, a bridge connecting our countries and peoples, and revealing to each other the best in us.”
In a weekend message for the annual Baptism of Rus Day, Patriarch Kirill lauded President Vladimir Putin for supporting the Orthodox Church's “spiritual, moral and patriotic education of youth”.
He hoped current church-state “interaction” would continue “contributing to the consolidation of the people, creation of peace and civil harmony, and affirmation in the minds of contemporaries of personal responsibility for the fate of the motherland”.
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