‘Sinners’ and ‘Russian Talibans’: A Holy War Roils a Once Placid Village

The village, according to the retired teacher in northern Moldova, was a placid place until the local priest, disorientated by the war in Ukraine, succumbed to Satan, she said. Before that, people got on well and attended Sunday services at the same Russian Orthodox Church.

Now, said Tamara Gheorghies, the teacher, “they don’t even say hello to each other.” The reason, at least in her telling, is simple: a decision by the village priest to sever his allegiance to Patriarch Kirill in Moscow, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church.

The Moscow Patriarch has for decades commanded the loyalty of Orthodox Christians across the former Soviet Union. But in March, the village priest joined a rival ecclesiastical hierarchy based in neighboring Romania, a member of the European Union.

“He has taken the path of terrible sin,” said Ms. Gheorghies, a member of a group of residents who are fighting to restore the primacy of the Russian church and defeat what they see as a rush to ally with decadent Western forces.

The rift over ecclesiastical allegiance in Rautel, a village of around 4,000 people 50 miles from Moldova’s northeastern border with Ukraine, is just one of many now playing out across the country and in other former Soviet Republics. Patriarch Kirill is a zealous ally of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. He has been pressing to maintain the loyalty of Orthodox faithful beyond Russia’s borders, and with it, Russian influence.