Phones are helping bring about the antichrist, says head of church

Companies like Facebook have been repeatedly criticised over the power the data they collect gives them

Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill (C) leads a Christmas service at the Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow, Russia, 06 January 2019 (EPA/YURI KOCHETKOV)

Phones and other smart devices are bringing humanity closer to the arrival of the antichrist, according to the head of the Russian Orthodox Church.

The data-gathering capacity of the devices are helping create a vast web of information that could be used to control people, he said.

In an interview shown Monday on state TV, Patriarch Kirill said the church does not oppose technological progress but is concerned that "someone can know exactly where you are, know exactly what you are interested in, know exactly what you are afraid of" and that such information could be used for centralized control of the world.

"Control from one point is a foreshadowing of the coming of Antichrist, if we talk about the Christian view. Antichrist is the person who will be at the head of the world wide web that controls the entire human race," he said.

He seemed to suggest that a better approach would be to spread the kinds of data that we collect around the internet. "If we don’t want to bring the apocalypse closer, there should be no single [control] centre," Patriarch Kirill said in the interview.

The warning comes increasing concern about the power that is being assembled by data-gathering companies like Facebook, which watch how people scroll around the internet and then use that data to try and influence consumers.

Patriarch Kirill's comments came as part of a holiday address to Orthodox Christians, who celebrate Christmas on 7 January.

In previous years, the 72-year-old leader of the church has made a series of widely-criticised comments about the causes of evil in the world. In the past, he has linked Isis to the fact the world was now granting more rights to gay people, for instance.