Moldova president says church must work for European integration

Moldova’s president waded carefully on Monday into a row pitting the ex-Soviet state’s two rival Orthodox churches against each other over Russian influence, saying churches should facilitate the country’s main aim of European integration.
Moldova, wedged between Ukraine and Romania, has for more than 150 years been a pawn in struggles between Moscow and Bucharest as part of either the Russian empire or Greater Romania. And that is the crux of the church row.
Some 92% of Moldova’s 2.5 million residents are Orthodox Christians. But neither church is autocephalous, or independent: one answers to Moscow, the other to Bucharest.
And a letter from the head of the largest Orthodox Church to its Russian parent church, made public last week, complained that the link with Moscow – and the invasion of Ukraine – was making it unpopular among parishioners.