07/23/2014, by Nina Achmatova
Moscow (AsiaNews) – The Russian Orthodox Church has launched an appeal to the people involved in the crash on July 17, in eastern Ukraine, to tell “the whole truth before God and the people”.
Meanwhile the tragic odyssey of recovery of bodies seems to have come to an end: 82 of the 298 victims are still missing, as reported by Dutch experts. The OSCE observers on the ground confirm that there are still human remains from the Malaysia airlines flight MH17 – probably shot down by a missile – but complain that recovery operations are once again at a standstill.
“It would be so right if the commanders of all missile systems that were in the crash area on July 17 told the whole truth about what they did and saw, if they said it to everyone, to God and people!” said archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, head of the Synodal department for Relations between Church and society. The same applies to the crew of the plane which is said to have flown near the crashed plane, he said. This is the thesis of the Russian Defense Minister who claims a Ukrainian fighter jet was flying very close to the Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 that was shot down.
“If these people did nothing wrong, they should have nothing to hide” said the representative of the Moscow Patriarchate, quoted by Interfax news agency – If a deadly sin, the killing of hundreds of innocent people, has occurred, it’s better to speak about it than carry the heavy burden of this guilt in the soul”.
On the feast day of the icon of the Virgin of Kazan, July 20 – three days after the tragedy – Patriarch Kirill urged the faithful to “pray with particular fervor to prevent the risk of a major war.” In the cathedral dedicated to Our Lady of Kazan on Red Square, the Orthodox primate asked faithful to pray to the Mother of God for “the salvation of Russia and the whole of historic Rus (a concept which also includes Ukraine and Belarus), for the end of the civil war in Ukraine, which is being exploited by external forces who harbor different aims from those they proclaim”