The Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia, His Holiness and Beatitude Ilia II, this week addressed a letter to the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, His Holiness Kirill, expressing his concern over recent developments in the Russia-occupied Tskhinvali region and in Abkhazia.
In the same letter, Ilia decries a decision to send graduates of Russian theological academies as auxiliaries to Russian military units deployed in Abkhazia and the Tskhinvali region.
The Georgian Patriarch underlined that “…the Russian Orthodox Church has always recognized and still recognizes the jurisdiction of the Georgian Orthodox Church. Therefore, such a decision is ambiguous to us and puts us in a difficult situation…(the) sending of clerics of any Orthodox church to our territory without our permission is unacceptable…I hope that you will take measures to normalize relations between our states, peoples and Churches.”