Patriarch Kirill of Moscow

Born Vladimir Mikhailovich Gundyayev on 20 November 1946, he rose through the church as Archbishop and later Metropolitan of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, serving as Chairman of External Church Relations and a permanent Holy Synod member from 1989. He became Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus' on 1 February 2009. A close ally of Vladimir Putin - whose father, according to Putin, baptized him - Kirill has called Putin's rule "a miracle of God" and steered the Russian Orthodox Church into tighter embrace with the Russian state. His relationship with Bartholomew I of Constantinople, the Ecumenical Patriarch, has grown tense. When Russia invaded Ukraine, Kirill lauded the war as a struggle against "forces of evil"; the World Russian People's Council under his leadership termed it a "Holy War." Bartholomew I said Kirill's support for Putin and the invasion damaged "the prestige of the whole of Orthodoxy."