Department for External Church Relations
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Metropolitan Hilarion: actions of a politician must not come into conflict with his religious convictions
The discussion of the question whether President Joe Biden could be allowed to take communion because he supports abortion has deeply divided American Catholics of different political views.
Answering the question of the host of the program “The Church and the World,” if similar discussions take place in the Russian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations, referred to the differences between Russian and American history. He pointed out that “before 1917 all Russian rulers had been Orthodox but afterwards up to the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the leaders of our country had been atheists, and militant atheists for the most part – in other words, they had been persecutors of the Church. So such question would not even come up. “
Metropolitan Hilarion underlined that the Russian Orthodox Church does not share the view according to which politicians may promote anti-religious views and be religious believers at the same time.
“I believe that there are many Catholics in the United States, and not only Catholics, who see a problem in this serious controversy between the religious faith to which Joe Biden claims to belong and the values he is advocating,” the hierarch said.
The DECR chairman mentioned, among other things, the position of the well-known American religious leader Franklin Graham, head of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Commenting on the scandalous answer of Joe Biden who, when asked by a journalist whether he believes Mr. Putin is a “killer”, responded: ‘I do,’ Rev. Graham noted that these words have offended millions of the Russian people and added that the US President Biden, while claiming to be a Christian, supports abortion, whereas abortion, in God’s eyes, is a murder. It is the killing of the innocent.
“I think that such a controversy is very noticeable and provokes questions and indignation of people,” Metropolitan Hilarion said.
In his opinion, the fact that a part of American Catholics, including bishops, deem it possible to allow a politician speaking in favour of abortion to take communion can be explained by “a very tolerant attitude to various fields of vision in the USA and by an opinion according to which a man can profess any kind of views while belonging to any religious confession.”
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