Final Document of CIS and Baltic Christian Inter-confessional Advisory Committee working meeting on Cooperation of Religious and Public Organizations in Population Policy

The CIS and Baltic Christian Inter-confessional Advisory Committee, at its working meeting on Cooperation of Religious and Public Organizations in the Population Policy on March 4, 2011, at the Moscow Patriarchate’s department for external church relations, adopted the following Final Document:

The participants in the conference held by the CIS and Baltic Christian Inter-confessional Advisory Committee on March 4, 2011, at the Moscow Patriarchate’s department for external church relations, draw attention to the need for common actions to be made by the CIS and Baltic state leaders, Christian Churches, traditional religions and public organizations, the mass media and the primary, secondary and higher education system for overcoming population problems facing our countries and support for the understanding of the family based on Christian ethical values.

The participants in the conference support the proposals by His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia for improving the Russian national policy in care of the family and childhood.

The assembled representatives of Christian confession in the CIS and Baltic countries propose the following:

- to point to the need for forming a public movement in defence of the human personality and family in its Christian understanding;

- to create mechanisms of interreligious cooperation for the defence of family values;

- to recognize that the family is one of the most important spheres of pastoral care;

- to call upon churches and religious communities to develop charity services in support of the family, motherhood and childhood;

- to call the business community to promote the formation of a positive image of the healthy and large family;

- to intensify cooperation with governmental bodies in the CIS and Baltic countries in supporting the family and Christian moral values;

- to bear witness through the mass media to the need for propagating a healthy way of life, family values, fatherhood and motherhood, the harm of alcoholism, drug addiction and other dependencies;

- to provide for mechanisms of teaching religious moral values in the primary, secondary and higher education systems and through introduction of courses on basic religious culture in schools and opening of chairs of theology in higher education institutions;

- to continue the CIAC regular meetings to discuss family policy and population situation and exchange experience of pastoral work with families in various communities; to hold a CIAC conference on population problem in March 2011.

Print publication

Final Document of CIS and Baltic Christian Inter-confessional Advisory Committee working meeting on Cooperation of Religious and Public Organizations in Population Policy

Patriarch

Department Chairman

Sermons

Patriarch

Department Chairman

Sermons