Department for External Church Relations
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Conference on Holy Russia’s United Civilizational Space in Europe Today held at the Orthodox Russia exhibition-forum
A Conference on Holy Russia’s Civilizational Space in Europe Today was held on 4 November 2009, the first day of the Orthodox Russia exhibition-forum. It was organized by the Moscow Patriarchate department for external church relations. It was attended by clergy and representatives of state, church and public organizations in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova.
The forum was opened by Hieromonk Philip (Riabykh), DECR vice-chairman, who proposed to discuss ‘how the countries of Holy Russia can build together their public life today, what role they play in Europe and what progress is made in the dialogue between the Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant worlds in Europe… as without understanding this we cannot move forward’.
Hieromonk Philip presented to the conference a paper of Archbishop Hilarion of Volokolamsk, DECR chairman, on the spiritual values of Holy Russia and their place in the European civilization, in which the archbishop noted that in international debates ‘the Russian Church points to the importance of including the spiritual heritage of the Eastern Slavic ethnoses in the development of the common European home’.
According to the DECR chairman, Europe cannot be viewed as a united civilization if it ignores the cultural space of Holy Russia. ‘Any ideology leading to the purposeful separation of Eastern and Western Christian habitats is wittingly unproductive. It can result only in cultivating enmity and disunity in people’s hearts and in new confrontations and conflicts in Europe’. He also underlined that the peoples of Holy Russia should realize their spiritual and cultural identity and learn to defend it in today’s Europe.
Archbishop Mitrofan, chancellor of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, spoke of the significance of the Pochaev Icon of the Mother of God in defending Orthodoxy in Rus’, stressing that this miracle-working icon played an important role in opposing the Union and preserving Russian self-awareness in the foreign environment.
The chairman of the State Duma committee for public and religious organizations, S. Popov, spoke of the importance of uniting processes not only in Holy Russia but also in countries outside it in which Orthodoxy is confessed, and stressed the need for political cooperation within the Orthodox world.
The participants discussed the participation of the peoples of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova in elaborating a European model of economic development and forming diplomatic relations in Europe today and offered their insights concerning the development of church-state relations for the sake of preserving high moral ideals in the countries of historical Russia and in the European continent in general.
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06.11.2020