Morphou Bishop: I honour Putin at every liturgy

Morphou Bishop Neofytos said he “honours” Russian President Vladimir Putin “at every liturgy” in an interview which surfaced on Thursday.

Speaking to the Russian Tass news agency, he said, “President Putin is a person familiar to me, even though we have never met, I venerate him with his first name Vladimir. I do the same for [Russian Foreign Minister] Sergey Lavrov, as well as for [Russian Security Channel Deputy Chairman] Dmitry Medvedev and his wife Svetlana.

“I pray for them. [Dmitry Medvedev] had asked me once when we first met in Moscow and later Svetlana came for a pilgrimage and, since then, I pray for those people whose thoughts, decisions, movements, and rights and wrongs determine the life of the world,” he said.

He also spoke on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, saying “Putin’s troops will enter Kyiv tomorrow! A great defeat is coming, not just for Zelenskiy, but for the entire western world in Ukraine!”

With this in mind, he touched on the interview of Putin conducted by American former news anchor Tucker Carlson, saying he was “very impressed” by Putin’s historical knowledge.

“Only leaders who lead a historical people can speak in historical terms and facts about contemporary problems. Whether the western man is in Europe or the USA, his perception is that politics means interests, means money, energy pipelines, geostrategy, geopolitics,” he said.

He added that in the interview, “a Putin who does not want war appeared. He wants peace. It also became apparent that the ones pushing for a world war in the months and years to come are the elites of the western world.”

“The leadership of Cyprus has decided that we belong to the west. I personally disagree with this position. We have much more in common with Russians, Serbs, Romanians, and Bulgarians than with any westerner,” he said.

He added, “this is why there are many marriages between Cypriots and Russians and why there are 200,000 of our Russian brothers in Cyprus. And when I say our brothers, I don’t mean emotionally, but theologically.”

He did touch on the matter of Russians buying property in the north, saying everyone who buys today in the occupied territories buys from the Turk who sells them, but the owner [of the property] is Greek.”

He warned the Moscow patriarchate not to send clerics to the north, “because then a political problem will turn into an ecclesiastical one.”

“We have a good historical precedent in Antalya, in Turkey, where there are thousands of Russians and there are mixed marriages with Turks who become Orthodox.

Speaking about the Holy Synod’s decision to recognise the Ukrainian orthodox church, he said “we as the leadership of the Church of Cyprus must push for the removal of this incommunicado division of Greek-speaking and Russian-speaking Orthodoxy which arose after the autocephaly of the Ukrainian church.”

He added, “after the great defeat not only of Zelenskiy but of the whole western world in Ukraine, each orthodox church and its patriarchates will be obliged to see history not through the lens of the generals and the camps.

“Unfortunately, for a moment, the patriarch saw history like this; not theologically, but geostrategically, that is selling us short, and it is a sin.”

He went on to say that Nato had “bombarded Serbia with nuclear weapons” and that as a result, “to this day, children are born without arms and to this day, they do not cultivate the fields.”

He then swiftly said “some problems can only be solved by war.”

“All that is happening with the supposedly autocephalous orthodox church [in Ukraine] is the epiphany which will soon be revealed to the lengths and breadths of the earth that is injustice. Heaven already knows that this is injustice. Putin’s troops will enter Kyiv,” he added.

He doubled down on his belief that the Church of Cyprus had engaged in politics by recognising the Ukrainian orthodox church, adding “many times the decisions of the Synods are not based on ecclesiastical criteria, and when the church fails, politicians, the military, and epidemiologists take over.”

“The head of the church, if he is a person who is above personal and political interests, should not have a file put in front of him by the KGB and the Cyprus Intelligence Services and the CIA. He must have a clean forehead,” he said.

He then moved on to a new set of political theories.

“Much more difficult times are coming for the whole world, and Christ will build a new crew for this ship called the church,” he began.

He then said, “Soros, Rothschild, Rockefeller, Kissinger are the Zionists. Not the Jews, the Zionists. Zelenskiy is an employee of the New World Order. Macron.”

“What do Zelenskiy, Macron, and Mitsotakis have in common? All three are Jews.”

“I have nothing to do with the Jews. I am not anti-semitic, since my Virgin Mary is from a Jewish family, all the apostles were Jews,” he added.

He said, “I know very well what the Jewish people mean and their contribution to God’s plan, but at some point in history, the people who spread throughout the world made Ukraine a special Khazar nation, which consists of pseudo-Jewish Russian Jews pretending to be Jews.”

He then moved on to the matter of homosexuality and said “the laws of homosexuality are being enforced by the New World Order.”

“Behind the New World Order is an attempt to create a pan-religion whose future leader will be the Antichrist and until then they will create a world economy, a world immorality, a world language: English, and a world technology, and a technological man who will replace man: the meta-man,” he said.

“Europe, Israel, and Persia are the next guinea pigs. That is why Putin has a big task, and if he does not succeed, God will put someone else from the Russian nation in charge who will succeed,” he said.

He then said, “the war is not with Nato, it is with demonic forces, and that is why actions were taken to divide us in orthodoxy – because only the liturgy gives birth to saints and only saints are feared by demons.”

Touching on the Cyprus problem, he said “something will happen in Cyprus and the Turks will pass through here to go to Crete … Then Russia will sort them out once and for all.”

“Russia is our friend, our friends, the largest people in Europe, orthodox Christians. They will help us, they also have secret weapons.”

The Cyprus Mail contacted the archdiocese for a comment, but did not receive a response.