Human sins were the reason why the disaster happened at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill said in Kyiv on Wednesday.
"Sin, which has infiltrated human nature, pushes people to make mistakes for the sake of achieving sinful goals. A horrible error was the cause of the Chornobyl disaster," the patriarch told the believers assembled for a patriarchal liturgy at the Kyiv Monastery of the Caves.
"God could have stopped the hand of the operator who made the horrible error while operating the reactor. God let it happen. And many people, by their death, might have contributed to the atonement for sins," he said.
The Chornobyl disaster did not occur without "the finger of God, s the cleanup in the aftermath of the disaster became a great act of moral courage for thousands of people," he said.
A disaster such as Chornobyl shows that "when a man acquires enormous strength through his mind, [advancing] science and creating technology, he must simultaneously increase his great moral responsibility to the people around him, for the peace of God and nature," the Russian patriarch said.
