To meet and be friendly with someone who is considered an international war criminal is cruelly morally and intellectually dishonoring and disqualifying

Vasile Bănescu, the spokesperson of the Romanian Patriarchate, criticized in a statement for G4Media the meeting in Moscow between the priest Ciprian Mega and the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. “This defiant and cynical attitude is cruelly dishonoring and disqualifying from a moral and intellectual point of view,” said Vasile Bănescu for G4Media.

His reaction comes after the Orthodox priest Ciprian Mega, who was the guest of honor at a Moscow film festival in the middle of the war started by Russia, had a meeting with President Vladimir Putin. Mega refused to talk to the G4Media reporter and hung up when asked about the meeting.

“To meet and maintain friendship with someone who is considered a war criminal at the international level, to declare that you did it for the good of your country (country) and your Church, even though they – who may know something more than you about their own good – they have publicly stood firm and clear in line with Europe and about the immense evil of a war of aggression against a free and sovereign state, this defiant and cynical attitude grossly dishonors and disqualifies from a moral point of view and intellectual”, Vasile Bănescu declared for G4Media.

“What would Christ Himself, whom you supposedly serve and witness from the altar, think and say about declaring a odious war of aggression as a “holy war”, about justifying it sacrilegiously in His very name, about the mass murder of innocent people, women, children, old people, men? This is the question”, said Vasile Bănescu.

Mega is the director of the film 21 Rubies, a film with a strong anti-Western message. His and actor Dorel Vișan’s presence at the Moscow festival was occasioned by the presentation of the film.

Ciprian Mega announced that he officiated a service in a Moscow church with the permission of Patriarch Kirill of Russia, one of the strongest supporters of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He also appeared in a photo with Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry and one of the voices of Russian war propaganda.

The film directed by Ciprian Mega has an anti-Western message, criticizing the church and political life, including DNA and the Covid-19 pandemic period.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued in March 2023 an international arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes in Ukraine.

We remind you that the Russian army caused tens of thousands of victims in Ukraine – civilians and soldiers. The Russian military committed massacres in the occupied areas as shown by the images from Bucea, Kharkiv, Makariv.