Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill calls Russian nuclear weapons ‘God’s grace’
Speaking to worshippers at the Holy Trinity Saint Seraphim-Diveyevo Monastery in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region, Patriarch Kirill commented on why Russia’s nuclear weapons were created.
He said it was there — where the relics of Venerable Seraphim of Sarov are kept — that “the shield of our homeland began to be forged.”
Scientists who worked here, in Sarov, created our Russian atomic bomb, which stopped the enemy’s plans to destroy and enslave our Fatherland. Thus, through the labor of the scientists, engineers, and workers who toiled here, the grace and mercy of God appeared over our country.
Kirill added that it was “no coincidence” that the scientific research and engineering work done there “saved our people and country from terrible destruction” that could otherwise have left “neither a country nor a people.”
Sarov, the city Kirill referenced, is home to the Russian Federal Nuclear Center, the All-Russian Research Institute of Experimental Physics.
It is not the first time Kirill has spoken about nuclear weapons. In 2023, while awarding physicist Radiy Ilkayev the Order of Venerable Sergius of Radonezh, First Class, he said nuclear weapons had been created “by God’s ineffable providence” and that “thanks to this power, Russia has remained independent and free.”
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