Chairman of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad meets with the OSCE acting chairman and Slovenia’s foreign minister Dimitrij Rupel

On 17 October 2005, Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, Chairman of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate met at the DECR MP premises with a OSCE delegation led by the acting chairman of the OSCE and foreign minister of the Republic of Slovenia Dimitrij Rupel.

Taking part in the meeting were Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Slovenia in Russia Andrej Benedeicic, DECR MP secretary for interorthodox relations archpriest Nikolai Balashov, DECR MP secretary for Church-Society relations priest Dimitry Dudko, and other DECR officials.

While greeting Metropolitan Kirill, the OSCE head underscored a particular role played by religious organizations in the life of Europe today and the importance of interreligious relations and dialogue of cultures and civilizations, Christianity and Islam in particular, in the building of a new Europe,.

D.Rupel informed representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church about the latest steps taken by Russia and the OSCE for the settlement of interethnic conflicts on the post-Soviet territories.

The DECR chairman spoke about the main problem of building a new Europe. He said that it was not a conflict between the followers of different religions, but the fact that traditional morals common for all Abrahamic religions often does not correspond or runs contrary to the secular system of values propagated by certain international organizations. He illustrated his thought by a report of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on ‘Women and Religion in Europe’ which is perceived by the believers as an obvious provocation of conflict challenging religious philosophy of life. The ousting of the norms of religious morals from secular legislation threatens the foundations of society.

As a result, – Metropolitan Kirill emphasized, – the believers encounter difficult dilemma as the open profession of their faith means their being unloyal to the law. To resolve this contradiction and avoid conflicts, a serious dialogue on an equal footing is needed aimed at the search for the ways of harmonizing traditional moral values with secular morals. Such a dialogue should be maintained with representatives of all traditional religions, including the leaders of the Muslim communities, as the total secularization of public consciousness is perceived as a threat to the faith and traditional way of life thus provoking the conflict of values.

Metropolitan Kirill emphasized a special role of the OSCE in the settlement of conflicts in the Caucasus and in the Central Asia and assured the OSCE acting chairman that the Russian Orthodox Church was prepared to promote reconciliation among people of different convictions. He expressed his hope that this influential international organization will promote the space for equal and responsible dialogue among secular and religious leaders and for combining their efforts for the sake of solution of the socially important problems.