Department for External Church Relations
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Decisions of the Inter-Council Presence of the Russian Orthodox Church
1. To approve the draft document on ‘Social work of Orthodox Christians’ and submit it to the Holy Synod for a further action by a Bishops’ Council; to ask the Holy Synod to work out a document determining the order in which public organizations shall obtain a church blessing.
2. To approve the draft document on ‘The practice of statements made and actions taken by hierarchs, clergy and laity during election campaigns. The problem of the clergy’s candidacy for elections’ and to submit it to the Holy Synod for a further action by a Bishops’ Council.
3. To approve the draft document on ‘The Russian Orthodox Church’s attitude to deliberate public blasphemy and libel against the Church’ and to submit it to the Holy Synod for a further action by a Bishops’ Council.
4. To approve the draft document ‘On the principles of organizing social work in the Russian Orthodox Church’ and to submit it to the Holy Synod for a further action by a Bishops’ Council; to instruct the Inter-Council Presence’s commission on organization of social and charitable work to draft a document concerning the organization of the work of brotherhoods and sisterhoods engaged in diakonia.
5. To approve the draft document ‘On measures to preserve the memory of new martyrs, confessors all those who suffered at the hands of the godless authorities in the years of persecution’; to note the manifold feats performed by those who suffered at the hands of non-Orthodox and non-religious persecutors through the 20th century in various countries under the canonical responsibility of the Moscow Patriarchate.
6. To approve the draft ‘Temporary provision for the material and social support of the clergy and church institutions staff and their families’ and to submit it to the Holy Synod for a further action by a Bishops’ Council.
7. To approve the draft document ‘On the ordination of celibates who are not monks’ and to submit it to the Holy Synod for a further action by a Bishops’ Council.
8. To continue examining numerous responses to and proposals for the draft document ‘On the admission of those who return to the Church from schisms’ with the participation of representatives of the Inter-Council Presence’s commission for opposing and overcoming church schisms and drafting committee.
Patriarch
Sermons
05.01.2026
24.12.2025
24.01.2021
06.11.2020