Metropolitan Hilarion chairs first meeting of editorial board of Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate

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The first meeting of the editorial board of the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate took place on October 4, 2011, at the Moscow Patriarchate’s department for external church relations.

The editorial board was established on the initiative of Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia. It includes Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk (chairman), Archbishop Mark of Yegoryevsk, director of the office for institutions abroad, Bishop Merkury of Rostov and Novocherkassk, head of the department for religious education and catechism, Bishop Panteleimon of Smolensk and Vyazma, head of the department for charity and social service, Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, head of the department for church-society relations, Archpriest Dimitry Smirnov, head of the department for relations with the Armed Forces and law enforcement, Archpriest Vladimir Silovyev, editor-in-chief of the Moscow Patriarchate Publishers, Archimandrite Tikhon Shevkunov, executive secretary of the Patriarchal Council for Culture, Mr. V. Legoida, head of the information department, and Mr. S. Chapnin, executive secretary of the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate and the Tserkovny Vestnik biweekly.

Opening the meeting, Metropolitan Hilarion said, ‘The Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate was founded in 1931 when our Church was in a very grave situation and existed throughout the Soviet period remaining almost the only source of information about the manifold life of our Church. In the situation of strict censorship, the journal lived a full life, was in demand and read. It had a rich illustrative material and presented an adequate picture of what was going on throughout the Russian Orthodox Church including the diaspora. The journal was read from cover to cover. The faithful looked forward to reading it and each issue was an event.

‘Those who are to be credited for this role of the journal are its editors-in-chief, His Holiness Patriarch Sergiy, Metropolitan Nikolay Yarushevich and Metropolitan Pitirim of Volokolamsk, who devoted several decades of his life to the Publishing Department of the Moscow Patriarchate and to the journal. Today the task of the journal has changed in some things, has become more narrow in others and remained the same in still others, but the main thing is that the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate has preserved its status of an official publication of the Russian Orthodox Church’.

Mr. S. Chapnin introduced the editorial board members to the present situation of the journal, its difficulties and prospects.

A discussion followed in which the editorial board members shared their opinions about the present situation of the journal, its prospects in today’s society and possible ways of fulfilling its tasks. Summing up the discussion, Metropolitan Hilarion set the editorial board a number of concrete tasks, stressing that ‘the editorial board was established to ensure the uninterrupted publication of the journal, improvement of its quality and restoration of the church-wide significance it used to have for many decades’.

DECR Communication Service

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Metropolitan Hilarion chairs first meeting of editorial board of Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate

Patriarch

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Patriarch

Department Chairman

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