Putin's Top Priest Takes Aim at Wealthy Russians: 'The Way to Hell'

The head of the Russian Orthodox Church issued a stark warning to wealthy Russians on Sunday.

Speaking during his Sunday service at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow, Patriarch Kirill said wealthy Russians who "refuse to share their wealth with people in need" are on the path to hell, reported RT, a Russian state-controlled international news television network.

According to the station, Kirill said a person's wealth is "only justified" when they are "ready to give a significant part of his funds to those who are in need, who suffer." In this case, he said, "God will [help] him to increase his material possessions." Not sharing, meanwhile, is "the way to hell."

"If a rich person is unable to see the suffering of a fellow human being and doesn't help, it's clearly a path away from God, away from Christ and his kingdom. The more money one has, the more responsibility rests on his shoulders for his earthly existence," the patriarch said. "May God grant that our [Russian] rich people, who were born in an Orthodox country and many of whom have links with the Church, always understand this."

Sunday's sermon isn't the first of Kirill's controversial messages to make headlines. In March, the patriarch "faced international condemnation" after providing a "religious justification for the war in Ukraine," Newsweek reported.

During another one of his Sunday sermons, Kirill described the war in Ukraine as a conflict over "which side of God humanity will be on" between Russia and Western countries such as Ukraine that support gay rights.

"Pride parades are designed to demonstrate that sin is one variation of human behavior," Kirill said during his sermon. "That's why in order to join the club of those countries, you have to have a gay pride parade."

He also suggested that the embrace of progressive Western values would lead to the end of civilization.

"If humanity accepts that sin is not a violation of God's law, if humanity accepts that sin is a variation of human behavior, then human civilization will end there," Kirill said.

Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of the Chechen Republic and a longtime supporter of Putin, also turned the war in Ukraine into a fight against the LGBTQ+ community. In a statement on his Telegram channel in July, Kadyrov said he doesn't want his "children and the children of their children to grow up in an atmosphere of satanic ideas of gender disgrace and for the sake of the economies of other states."