Metropolitan Kirill meets with CEC Secretary-General Colin Williams

Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, head of the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations, met on July 7, 2006, with Conference of European Churches (CEC) Secretary-General Colin Williams. Mr. Rudiger Noll, director of the CEC Church and Society Commission joined them in their talk.

The metropolitan greeted Dr. Williams, elected to the post of CEC secretary-general a year ago, by stressing the great importance that the Russian Orthodox Church attached to this international Christian organization, saying, ‘We remember the positive role that CEC played in overcoming the consequences of World War II, especially the alienation between people who belonged to different Churches. The system of solidarity between Churches in East and West was formed thanks to CEC. Such is the great historical importance of the Conference’.

Speaking about the tasks facing CEC today, Metropolitan Kirill said that Dr. Williams came to the post of the leader of this organization at a difficult time, ‘as it is in Europe that strong attempts have been made to oust religious values from public life. It certainly contradicts the self-understanding of the CEC. Therefore its role should become as strong as it was after World War II. We all are committed to cooperation between churches, and today they should make special efforts to act together in face of secularism. We hope that in the future CEC will become an ever more attractive organism for interaction between churches in East and West’.

Dr. Williams, on his part, said that the CEC leaders were grateful to the Russian Orthodox Church for its commitment to inter-Christian cooperation despite all the complexities existing in this area. He noted that the period between the 60s and 80s was marked with a considerable upsurge in relations among churches, which, unfortunately, was absent today. Today the European continent, he said, did not even know what its values were. Therefore we need a dialogue with the youth so that a spiritual rise of Christianity might be returned to Europe.

The sides considered a number of practical matters concerning the work of the Conference of European Churches and participation of the Russian Orthodox Church in its activities.

Participating in the talk were also Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, DECR vice-chairman, Rev. Igor Vyzhanov, DECR secretary for inter-Christian relations, and Alexander Vasyutin of the DECR staff.