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A meeting of the Board of the founding Churches of the Christian Interconfessional Consultative Committee (CICC) met at the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations (DECR) in Moscow on May 20, 2016.

Taking part in the meeting were the CICC co-chairmen: Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, head of the DECR; Archbishop Paolo Pezzi, head of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of the Mother of God in Moscow; and Rev. Vitaly Vlasenko, head of the Department for External Church Affairs of the Russian Union of the Evangelical Christians Baptists, as well as heads and chairmen of other Christian confessions represented at the CICC Board.

While greeting the participants, Metropolitan Hilarion emphasized that the CICC was a unique platform for cooperation among Christian confessions in the former Soviet Union allowing them to coordinate their positions on the most topical problems one of which is the upholding of traditional moral values.

Metropolitan Hilarion reminded the participants in the meeting that the CICC has set up by the decision of the International Interconfessional Conference ‘Called to One Hope in the Bond of Peace’ held in 1996. Four plenary sessions have been held since then. The last one that took place in St. Petersburg in 2014 discussed the crisis of the family and the problem of orphans and adopted a statement on the situation in Ukraine with an appeal to peace restoration in the country.

Discussed at the Moscow meeting were the 140th anniversary of the Synodal translation of the Bible into Russian, the preparation for the 5th plenary session of the CICC and realization of other CICC projects.