ACCORDING TO CANONICAL AND ORTHODOX CHURCH TRADITION, A FORMAL COUNCIL CAN BE CONVENED TO INVESTIGATE AND ANATHEMATIZE PATRIARCH KIRILL FOR PUBLICLY PREACHING HERESY, THE CRITERIA FOR THIS ARE MET
Deacon Andrei Kuraev published
(https://www.facebook.com/reel/4571120646444198) a video of statements (https://t.me/shaltnotkill/12992) by Moscow Patriarch Kirill (Gundyaev), which are heretical to the Orthodox Church, claiming that Jesus Christ will appear outside the flesh at the Second Coming. The Patriarch preached them in his homily on the Ascension of the Lord on 21 May 2026.
"The Church of God is that through which the Lord is present in people's lives from the very times when He came in the flesh to serve the salvation of the human race, until the time when He will appear outside all flesh, in glory," said the First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church.
As a reminder, the Orthodox Church teaches (https://pravoslavie.kg/answers/2982) that Jesus Christ will come at the Second Coming in the flesh.
"The canons require that the patriarch, who publicly professed heresy, be brought before a council, and until a council decision is made, all ecclesiastical communion with him be severed," he emphasized.
The deacon also noted that the heretical words of the head of the Russian Orthodox Church were ignored by Bishop Kirill (Zinkovsky) of Sergiev Posad and Dmitrov, Rector of the Moscow Theological Academy, and Bishop Nikolai (Pogrebnyak) of Balashikha and Orekhovo-Zuyevo, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, who were present at the service.
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From the book ''Heresy of Patriarch Kirill''
https://followthesaints.com/books/the-heresy-of-patriarch-kirill
Canon XV of the First-Second Council states that those who separate from communion with their primate because of some heresy condemned by the Holy Councils or Fathers (if he publicly preaches heresy and openly teaches it in churches) are not only not subject to the penances prescribed by the canons for having separated themselves from communion with the said bishop before the Council's decision, but are also worthy of the honor due to Orthodox Christians. Indeed, they condemned not bishops, but false bishops and false teachers, and did not sever the unity of the Church through schism, but rather sought to free the Church from schisms and divisions.
Each of these categories below, standing alone, constitutes public preaching of heresy in the sense Canon 15 requires. They are not one accusation but seven independent grounds:
1. Communion with Rome and recognition of papal authority (Chapters 1–4, 6): Meeting with Pope Francis in Havana (2016), signing a joint declaration treating Catholic heresies as “wounds,” exchanging the Kiss of Peace, calling the Pope “brother” and “Your Holiness,” offering “Memory Eternal” for Pope Francis upon his death, and formally recognizing Roman Catholic sacred spaces.
2. “Muslims and Orthodox pray to the same God” (Chapter 5): Publicly teaching that Islam and Orthodoxy worship the same God, contradicting the Trinitarian dogma of the faith.
3. The World Council of Churches (Chapter 7): Defending the WCC as “our common home” and “the cradle of a united church,” an organization whose foundational documents presuppose that the Church of Christ is divided and must be reunited through ecumenical dialogue.
4. Joint prayer with Monophysites (Chapter 8): Presiding at joint prayer services with Armenian Apostolic clergy, whose Christology was condemned at the Fourth Ecumenical Council (Chalcedon, 451 AD).
5. Gloryfying Sergianism and the KGB church, sings Eternal memory for soldiers who served the anathematized regime (1918 St Tikhon's anathema of Soviet Power), He has offered the Holy Cross at eternal flames that a martyred priest rightly called idolatrous. He has performed a full memorial prayer service inside a Soviet war memorial complex. And his clergy have inserted “for faith” into the commemoration of those who served a regime that murdered the faithful. Worked for KGB under code name ''Mikhailov'', He preached Darwinism (theory of evolution) (Chapters 9-14) .
6. Russian World ethnophyletism (Chapters 15–16): Teaching that Orthodox unity is grounded in ethnic and civilizational identity rather than the apostolic faith, a teaching condemned as heresy by an international assembly of Orthodox hierarchs in 2022.
7. War theology: a soteriological heresy (Chapters 17–20): Publicly teaching that soldiers dying in Ukraine have their sins “washed away” by death in battle and that the war is a “holy struggle,” contradicting the Orthodox teaching on repentance, baptism, and the remission of sins.