KALININGRAD PROVINCE SHOULD BECOME SPIRITUAL OUTPOST OF RUSSIA IN EUROPE—PATRIARCH
Interfax-Religiia, 16 March 2015
Patriarch of Moscow and all-Rus Kirill declared the special role of Kaliningrad province in the dialogue between Russia and the West.
"The province was created not only as a strategic outpost of Russia, designed forever to prevent the Drang nach Osten; it should also become a spiritual outpost of Russia in Europe, not a region more vulnerable to western influence than others but a region more prepared than others for a dialogue with the West and for the introduction of our spiritual values into the dialogue," the patriarch said on Saturday at a forum of the World Russian People's Sobor in Kaliningrad.
He said that now there has begun a very opportune moment for such an honest dialogue, including joint reflections on values, "because the once common Christian foundation of Europe, whether Eastern or Western, is now being subjected to destruction."
The primate noted that Russia is still preserving the spiritual foundation and, by insisting on the importance of spiritual values, "has a great deal to say to our Western partner."
"While remaining open to scientific and technological cooperation and to the experience of material and routine arrangements, we must not yield an inch of our spiritual values while preserving the Orthodox faith and our national identity," he stressed.
The patriarch said that it is profoundly symbolic that the 70th anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War coincides with the 70th anniversary of the Kaliningrad province, which is the "fruit of victory realized as its result."
"Our people played a decisive role in the achievement of victory over nazism, not only in a physical sense but also in a spiritual sense. Striving for centuries to live according to the law of truth and goodness, it was Russia that offered to humanity the principle of the equality of peoples without dominating metropolises and oppressed colonies. Since the time of our victory in 1945, this principle has received recognition in all the world and has become a genuine worldwide value," he declared.
The World Russian People's Sobor is an international public organization that was created in 1993 and became an all-Russian tribune of social thought. The head of the sobor is the patriarch of Moscow and all-Rus. In 2005 the sobor was granted special consultative status in the United Nations. Departments of the sobor have been opened in a number of Russian regions. (tr. by PDS, posted 16 March 2015)
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