“Today’s funeral prayer is combined with prayer for our homeland, so that the Lord will protect our people and our country from internal and external enemies,” Patriarch Kirill of Moscow said on the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe. “May he strengthen us in the heroic commitment to serve and help each other, as did the soldiers … Making the sign of the cross [they] launched themselves into the attack of the enemy, in the name of God.”