Friday, 4 March 2022 — Indian Punchline
Pope Francis (R) met Patriarch Kirill (R) at Havana airport in Havana in February 2016 in the first meeting of a Catholic pope and head of Russian Orthodox Church, on a mission to try to overcome the rift in Christianity dating back to Great Schism of 1054.
The Ukraine conflict has dimensions ranging from geopolitics to geoeconomics. But the subterranean eddy of animate religious passions eludes the casual non-Christian observer. A remark recently by Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic that 85% of his country’s residents will always support Russia, come what may, called attention to the paradigm. But religious cleavages in Christianity, when it overlaps with racial divides particularly, are a highly sensitive matter that is never allowed to climb up from the attic to the living room.
The New Dark Age 