Commemoration meeting devoted to Eugene Karmanov

COMMEMORATION MEETING DEVOTED TO EUGENE KARMANOV

“A Zealot of the Church Book” – this was the name of the meeting which took place on November 18 at the Russian Foundation of Culture (RFC). The gathering was organized under the program for the development and preservation of culture and art in Russia and was devoted to the memory of Eugene Karmanov (1927-1998), a long-standing member of the Publishing Department and the Department for External Church Relations. Among the participants were Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, DECR chairman, Archbishop Herman of Volgograd and Kamyshin, Mr. A. Nalepin, director of the Russian Archives and RFC vice-president, staff members of the RFC and the Moscow Patriarchate’s Synodal departments, relatives and friends of Eugene Karmanov, and church intellectuals. The meeting was chaired by I. Avdiev, director of the RFC’s Russian Shrines project.

“When we remember Eugene Karmanov and think about his life and work, we describe him as intellectual… There was a circle of the Russian Orthodox intelligentsia gathered around him. It included people who were to come bishops, priests, church writers, scholars”, Metropolitan Kirill said in his speech. He shared his ideas about the role of the intelligentsia in the life of the Church and society. “An intellectual is a person of dialogue capable of conveying his system of values to others without dominating, ruining or offending them”, he said and added, “in this sense it is quite justifiable and natural that Eugene Karmanov should have worked at the Department for External Church Relations, because all our work is one with those who think differently and who are different from us. If a person tries to understand others and seeks the truth through open dialogue with others, he may be accused of every cardinal sin, up to the betrayal of Orthodoxy”. Metropolitan Kirill expressed the conviction that the remembrance of such people as Eugene Karmanov can make a good impact and help people understand that strength is not only the ability to dominate and defeat others.