A Russian Orthodox priest in Kazakhstan, defrocked last summer after speaking out against the invasion of Ukraine, has launched a longshot bid to establish an autocephalous Orthodox church of Kazakhstan to escape the Russian Orthodox Church's "crime" and the "corruption and spirit of the Antichrist reigning" in its local branch.
Iakov Vorontsov said his aim is to serve Orthodox Christians who have lost confidence in the Russian church's leadership, the Moscow Patriarchate, because of its continuing support for Kremlin war planners' brutal 21-month-old campaign.
"Taking advantage of the citizen's right to freedom of religion, given by the constitution, I declare my intention to create the Autocephalous Orthodox Church of Kazakhstan," he wrote on Facebook on December 4.
Vorontsov alleged that an effort the day before by the presiding priest at the Ascension Cathedral in Almaty to "discredit" him to parishioners and "smear everyone with the crime that the Russian Federation and its Russian Orthodox Church are carrying out in Ukraine" had "resurrected my extinguished Christian hopes and pastoral aspirations."
Ending the "sabbatical" that reportedly began when he was unofficially relieved of church duties in the early weeks of the invasion, Vorontsov encouraged people to become parishioners or simply provide support or assistance. Vorontsev said he would announce a date and place for a constituent assembly at a later time.
Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision to launch Europe's first full-scale invasion since World War II in February 2022 followed the annexation of Crimea and launch of support for armed Ukrainian separatists eight years earlier.
The Russian church under Patriarch Kirill has repeatedly expressed support for the war and has mobilized against dissenting clerics in Russia as well as among its subordinate dioceses in Ukraine and places like Moldova.
No Small Task
Most estimates put the number of Orthodox believers in Kazakhstan at around one-quarter of its population of nearly 20 million people.
The former Soviet republic has documented nearly 1 million Russians entering its territory since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began to escape hardship, censorship, or the draft, among other reasons.
The Russian church's local metropolitan district in mostly Muslim Kazakhstan is known as the Eastern Orthodox Church in Kazakhstan and includes nine eparchies, or dioceses.
It has maintained allegiance to the Russian Orthodox Church and condemned Vorontsov's initiative as schism and said nothing good will come of it. "According to the law on religious associations, any citizen who collects a certain number of signatures professing the teaching that he considers religious…can register his community," said Metropolitan Aleksandr, the head of the Kazakh arm of the church. "But in our eyes, the community that he registers cannot be considered a church."
Efforts to create new, independent Orthodox churches on a national level are rare and face significant challenges.
In Ukraine, a decades-long effort to reestablish an independent national church culminated in the granting in 2019 of autocephaly to an Orthodox Church of Ukraine by Orthodox Christianity's global spiritual leadership, the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. The Moscow Patriarchate strongly opposed the move and initiated a schism with the Istanbul authorities in the run-up to that recognition.
Orthodox Christmas celebrate Christmas in the Russian Orthodox cathedral in Astana in January 2021.
Vorontsov said his aim was to create a church in Kazakhstan that "will not submit to Moscow" and will not take part in its "fascist propaganda," and instead will help in "bringing peace."
Paying A Price For Opposing War
Vorontsov was among around 300 Orthodox members of a group called Russian Priests for Peace that signed a letter in the early days of the war calling for peace and condemning what they called the "murderous orders" carried out in Ukraine.
He went on to become an outspoken critic of the Kremlin policies on Ukraine and condemned the Russian Orthodox Church for its support of the invasion.
Kirill -- a longtime Putin ally -- has repeatedly blessed Russian military forces being deployed to Ukraine and avoided condemning their attacks on civilians. He has also urged priests to pray for a Russian victory.
Vorontsov has urged Kazakhstan to leave Russian-led regional alliances such as the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the Eurasian Economic Union. He has also called on Kazakh authorities to ban any religious organization controlled by Moscow.
The clergyman has paid a heavy price for his vocal criticism. Although it made no public announcement of a defrocking, the Russian-led Eastern Orthodox Church in Kazakhstan barred Vorontsov from conducting church services, accusing him of sowing hostility and provoking hatred.
Church officials in Kazakhstan insist their clergy must not make political statements, although Vorontsov insists his anti-war stance has nothing to do with politics.
He has also come under scrutiny by the Kazakh police. Vorontsov said he was recently questioned by police over comments he made on Facebook in August. In that post, he said the Russian church had "ceased to have anything in common with Christianity."
Vorontsov told Current Time in June that "The more the Orthodox Church becomes Russian, the less it remains Christian." Christianity is "international and nonnational," he added.
Kazakhstan, which shares a 7,500-kilometer border with Russia, is a close ally of Moscow and has maintained strong ties with Putin's government despite the invasion of Ukraine.
In February 2023, Kazakhstan was among 32 countries that abstained from voting on a UN resolution that condemned the invasion and called for the removal of Russian forces from Ukraine.