Hearings on ‘Human Rights and Dignity. Church-social View’ are held in Moscow

On 28 February 2006, Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, Chairman of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate and Deputy Head of the World Russian People’s Council chaired the Council’s hearings on the ‘Human Rights and Dignity. Church-Social View’ in the conference hall of the ‘Danilovskaya’ hotel.

The hearings were held in the frameworks of the World Russian People’s Council in order to deepen the discussion on the Orthodox understanding of human rights and dignity. The participants exchanged opinions on the place of these ideas in Orthodox and secular systems of values, in social ministry of the Church and in the development of modern Russian state and society.

Among the participants were deputies of the State Duma of the RF Federal Assembly, well-known public figures, and experts.

Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, Chairman of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate and Deputy Head of the World Russian People’s Council, delivered a keynote speech.

‘We wonder if the conception of human rights and its norms, as they are realized in international and national legislations, contradict to God’s idea of man. How can it help or prevent a Christian believer from living according to his faith? Today life poses these questions to the believers of the Russian Orthodox Church. Today these questions are posed to this high assembly’, Metropolitan Kirill said in his opening address.

Among the speakers also were A. Isaev, Chairman of the State Duma Committee of the RF Federal Assembly on labor and social policy, V. Lukin, RF Human Rights Commissioner, Professor Shelov-Kovediaev from the Higher School of Economics, A. Podberezkin, member of the Council for developing interests of civil society and human rights at the RF President, and others.

The results of the Council’s hearings will be considered for working out a conceptual church-social document on human rights that is to be discussed at the 10^th Jubilee World Russian People’s Council in Moscow on 4-6 April 2006.