Metropolitan Kirill awarded the honorary degree of doctor of political sciences

METROPOLITAN KIRILL AWARDED THE HONORARY DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCES

Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, chairman of the Department for External Church Relations, was made Honorary Doctor of Political Sciences by the State University of Perugia on October 2, 2002, in Perugia, Italy. During the awarding ceremony Metropolitan Kirill delivered a lecture on the Future of Europe and the Eastern Christian Tradition.

The University of Perugia dating back to the early 14th century is one of Europe’s oldest and most respected educational institutions. The committee for conferring scientific degrees states in its report: “In the period when the Soviet regime underwent a deep political and cultural crisis, Metropolitan Kirill sought to substantiate a special role that the Russian Orthodox Church played in Russian society because of the considerable contribution she made to the development of political and national identity in the past, and the effort she made to take into account various contemporary cultural, social and political manifestations for the sake of tradition.”

The awarding ceremony was attended by the Representative of the Russian Federation to the Holy See Mr. Litvin, Ambassadors of Kazakhstan, Romania and Yugoslavia to the Vatican, a clergyman of the Russian Orthodox parish in Rome Hieromonk Philipp (Vasiltsev) and the DECR delegation which had earlier participated in the conference on Sanctity and Charity: Path of the Churches in the Era of the Globalization, which took place on September 30 – October 1, 2002, in Terni, Italy.

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Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, chairman of the Department for External Church Relations

Lecture by Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, chairman of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, in the University of Perugia on 2 October 2002 in Perugia, Italy