Round-table conference on implementation of the constitutional provisions for church-state relations

The Moscow Patriarchate Department for Cooperation with the Armed Forces and Law Enforcement and the academic council on religio-social studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences department for social sciences organized a round-table conference on Implementation of Constitutional Provisions for Church-State Relations, which took place on April 11 at the Synodal department’s conference hall.

The round-table conference was chaired by Archpriest Dmitry Smirnov, chairman of the department, and Prof. M. Gelvanovsky, chairman of the RAS department for religio-social studies. The meeting was attended by representatives of the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations, Presidential Administration, Federation Council, State Duma, General Prosecutor’s Office, Interior Ministry, Ministry of Defence and Federal Security Service, the Pobeda.ru website reports.

The participants came to the conclusion that to regulate church-state relations in Russia, to ensure fully the rights of believers and to improve the spiritual and moral climate in the country, it is desirable to work out a comprehensive program for implementing constitutional provisions for church-state relations on the governmental or state-public level, providing for the necessary resources and mechanism of this implementation, to develop measures for improving the legal basis for this implementation, to consider logistic, financial, educational and personnel support for religious education in the system of training personnel for power and law-enforcement structures.