Working meeting of the Religions Working Group of the Petersburg Dialogue Forum held in St Petersburg

DECR Communication service, 16.09.2026.

On September 16, 2026, a meeting of the Religions Working Group of the Petersburg Dialogue Forum was held in St Petersburg. The meeting was devoted to discussing the results of the group's work in 2026 and plans for the coming year.

At the beginning of the meeting, the participants sang “Memory Eternal” in memory of the priest Vyacheslav Zavalny, who had taken part in the group's activities and had tragically died.

Church representatives and experts shared their impressions of the meetings held by the group in 2026 in Samarkand and Kaliningrad, and noted their effectiveness. New areas were identified for the further development of the working group's activities in 2027.

The St Petersburg meeting was attended by Archpriest Igor Vyzhanov, Deputy Chairman of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate and head of the working group; V.V. Kipshidze, Deputy Chairman of the Department for Relations between the Church, Society and the Media; Archpriest Sergiy Zvonaryov, DECR Secretary for the affairs of the far abroad; Archpriest Vladimir Khulap, Vice-Rector and Head of the Department of Church Practical Disciplines at St Petersburg Theological Academy; Hierodeacon Alexy (Ochkanov), staff member of the DECR Secretariat for the affairs of the far abroad; and R.N. Lunkin, Head of the Department of Social and Political Studies at the Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

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Working meeting of the Religions Working Group of the Petersburg Dialogue Forum held in St Petersburg

Patriarch

Department Chairman

Sermons

Patriarch

Department Chairman

Sermons