PATRIARCH KIRILL: UPCOMING YEAR WILL PROCEED UNDER SIGN OF PRINCE VLADIMIR, BAPTIZER OF RUS
Patriarch of Moscow and all-Rus Kirill declared in a Christmas interview on television channel Rossiia that the upcoming year of 2015 will signify the 1000th year from the day of the passing of Prince Vladimir, the Baptizer of Rus. An important place in the celebration of this date will be given to Crimea, where the prince received baptism first.
"Prince Vladimir was the civilizational breakthrough of our people. He was baptized in Chersonesus. This is an historical fact. The chronicles speak about the baptism of Vladimir in Chersonesus," he said.
"The celebration of the millennium of the prince will give the possibility of thinking about a lot—about the sources of human strength, human nobility and human kindness. And of course about the colossal impact that adherence to Christian values provided in ancient Rus," TASS quotes the words of the primate of the Russian Orthodox Church.
He recalled that Prince Vladimir was "internally changed" from a cruel pagan after his baptism "so that people began to call him the Red Sun." The patriarch delivered these words in the context of a conversation about the inner transformation of a person. "And what did this transformation lead to in terms of politics? To the fact that Russia gives a civilizational impact and it becomes a part of European culture, both eastern as well as western. Because at that time it was a single cultural space," Patriarch Kirill emphasized. (tr. by PDS, posted 8 January 2015)
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