PATRIARCH
KIRILL
ARRIVES FOR INTER-RELIGIOUS SUMMIT IN BAKU
In 2008,
a schism
occurred in the RPTsMP because of a similar summit
Patriarch
Kirill
arrived for the second Baku summit of religious leaders of the
world, which
begins on 14 November. As the Communications Service of the
OVTsSMP [Department
for External Church Relations], at the Gaidar Aliev airport the
primate of the
RPTsMP was met by Archbishop of Baku and Azerbaijan Alexander;
the ambassador
of the Russian Federation to Azerbaijan, M.N. Bocharnikov; the
ambassador of the
Azerbaijan Republic to Russia, Polad Biulbiul Ogly, and the
deputy prime
minister of Azerbaijan, Az-ana Shakhin Mustafaev.
The
delegation of the
RPTsMP also included Metropolitan of Volokolamsk Ilarion; the
director of the
Administrative Secretariat of the Moscow patriarchate, Bishop of
Pavlovo-Posasd Foma; the chairman of
the synodal
Department for Relations of Church and Society and News Media,
V.R. Legoida;
the vice-chairman of the OVTsSMP, Archimandrite Filaret; and
the director of
the Patriarchal Service of Protocol, Archpriest Andrei
Bondarenko.
From
the
airport Kirill went to the Congress Center in the center of
Azerbaijan's capital,
where he addressed the second Baku summit of religious leaders
of the world.
In
his
opinion, "a genuine war is going on against traditional
religions."
Without naming explicitly the culprits in this war, the
patriarch of the RPTsMP
indicated that they should be sought in certain "extremist
movements," which draw in mainly the youth. The patriarch sees
a puzzle in
the success of "extremist ideology," in that religious people
do not
accept the "modern secular paradigm."
Having
confronted
extremism, the head of the RPTsMP concentrated on a critique of
secularism
(worldliness): "In society there is being actively promoted an
image of
religious organizations as antiquated and imposing a limited
worldview and a
non-modern understanding of morality. At the same time, along
with religiosity,
traditional morality is being rejected, like the notion of
marriage as a union
between a man and a woman and of the inviolability of human life
from the
moment of conception until natural death."
The
patriarch
expressed a thesis, doubtful from the point of view of Orthodox
doctrine, that
differences in faith and in doctrine do not impact "questions of
public
morality," and he urged that those Christians, Muslims, and Jews
attending
the summit together "testify to moral guidelines." At the same
time,
he urged the protection of the "identity and freedom of
peoples."
Speaking
about
persecutions of Christians, the primate of the RPTsMP
concentrated on instances
occurring in the Near East and in Africa, remaining completely
silent about
those religious persecutions that are occurring on territory
that he calls the
"zone of canonical responsibility" of his own church.
Kirill
said that the
occasion for the summit was the 70th birthday of the leader of
Azerbaijani
Muslims, Sheikh-ul-Islama Allakhshukiur Pashazade. The patriarch
awarded the
sheikh the order of St. Seraphim of Sarov, first degree, which
contains the
image of the saint, which is forbidden in Islam, and the
Orthodox cross. Why it
was this order that was selected to be the award for the Muslim
leader, the
Communications Service of the OVTsSMP did not report.
The
first world summit
of religious leaders in Moscow in 2008 was accompanied by the
separation from
the RPTsMP of a group of clerics and laity led by Bishop of
Anadyr and Chukotka
Diomid, who considered that Metropolitan Kirill's speech at the
summit stating
that Christians of all confessions, Muslims, and Jews have the
same god was a
departure from Orthodox faith. Since that time, the number of
"noncommemorating"
clergy in the RPTsMP has only increased for various reasons and
at the present
time it has exceeded 200 persons, an observer for the portal
Credo.Press
reports. (tr. by PDS, posted 14 November 2019)
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