PATRIARCH KIRILL WARNS AGAINST PUBLICIZING “DESTRUCTIVE IDEAS” ON THE INTERNET

RIA-Novosti – August 2016

The primate of the Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill, speaking on Sunday in the Trinity Cathedral on a visit to the Transfiguration Solovki Monastery called upon all who use the internet to understand their responsibility for what they write online.

“Today anyone who publishes his thoughts and words on the internet is amongst the ranks of those who exert a terrible and destructive influence, and we know, that thousands and millions have an influence on our conscience and on our minds. Those who have authority in society carry a particular responsibility, and those who are known, who have an influence on people by their creativity, who, having creative powers, contaminate the people’s mentalities by these powers, have a great influence on the human condition. How many today are those who use their talents, minds, knowledge, influence and popularity to defile human nature!” stated the patriarch of Moscow and All Russia.

The first hierarch noted that today even in a monastery “it’s impossible to take refuge from the flood of information filling the whole earth,” and to fence oneself off from “ideas that kill the human conscience.” Therefore, according to him, monks and clergy, and especially youths and children today need a particular strength to resist them. The patriarch is convinced that only faith can give this strength, and in preserving it, even in the most frightening times, people maintain inner freedom.

The patriarch consecrated the monastery’s restored Trinity Zismo-Savvaty Cathedral, built by Emperor Alexander II. In Soviet times the church housed the so-called “quarantine company” Solovki special purpose camp where newly-arrived prisoners lived. At the time of the restoration of monastic life in the monastery the church was practically destroyed.

“As it was at the initiative of the head of state that this church was built, so it is at the initiative of the head of state, our president, that this church is now restored. Practically all of the restoration was carried out with state funds, and this is a wonderful and appropriate deed. If the government destroyed it, it should rebuild this holy place,” emphasized Patriarch Kirill.