To the Editor:

The local Kremlin bishop manufactured news again. At the conclusion of Holy and Great Lent and a day before Orthodox Holy Week commenced, on the Saturday of Lazarus, April 24th, 2021 – The International Day of Remembrance for the Armenian Genocide – the local Moscow bishop [Patriarch of Moscow Cyril], during a televised interview asserted a dirty, ugly, and unprecedented declaration:

"There were no genocides of Christian minorities during the Ottoman Empire."

This feigned ignorance is astonishing, unworthy, and shameful. I cannot distinguish his purpose yet, disgraceful politics or another sinister and malevolent flailing attack on Orthodox unity? Exploration is sure to come. This appalling comment from the same ilk that denies its own perpetrated genocide as the ‘Holodomor problem’.

As Patriarch Cyril said the Holodomor “was a common misfortune” “due to natural disasters, claimed an enormous number of lives in Ukraine.” What Cyril calls a ‘natural famine’ was in fact “murder by starvation” committed in 1932-33 by the Russians against Ukrainians. 3.5 million deaths!

Why insert oneself into an unrelated matter except to influence alternative considerations. Could this simply be a response to President Biden's statement on the Genocide? Of course not. Patriarch Cyril always peddles the notion he has no geopolitical inclinations. Then why pontificate: "There were no genocides of Christian minorities during the Ottoman Empire."

Here is an abridged primer of the final 25 years of the Ottoman Empire:

Hamidian Massacres     1894–1896    300,000 dead Armenians

Greek Genocide             1913–1922    900,000 dead Greeks

Seyfo Massacre             1914-1918    250,000 dead Assyrians

Armenian Genocide       1915-1918    1.5 million dead Armenians

Can the Patriarch of Moscow be unaware that in the first twenty-five years of the Ottoman Empire, or ensuing centuries, Christian minorities fared no better?

In anticipation of the Glorious Resurrection and celebrations bathed in His glorious Light, on Bright Tuesday we will commemorate the holy, glorious, and right-victorious New Martyrs Raphael, Nicholas, Irene and the majority of the village of Thermi who suffered martyrdom by the Ottoman Turks on the island of Lesbos, Greece in 1463 soon after the fall of Constantinople. This wasn’t even the beginning of the genocides, but I am reminded by the illiterate statement: "There were no genocides of Christian minorities during the Ottoman Empire."

Patriarch Cyril is unworthy, ανάξιος , недостойный !

Christ is risen!

Elias Damianakis

Hagiographos, Archon Maestor

New Port Richey, FL