Belarusian Orthodox church to welcome guests of Major pro-life forum

Holy Spirit Cathedral in Minsk

Belarusian Exarchate – Moscow Patriarchate
Report Prepared for OCP New Service
16/4/14

Belarusian Orthodox church to welcome  guests of  big pro-life forum in May 2014.

On the 17th of May in Bobruisk (Belarus) the international forum “Family as the sphere of responsibility of the church and state” will take place. The event will be carried out with the support of the Orthodox Church and the Belarusian state. The archpriest Dmitri Smirnov, the head of the Patriarch’s Commission on the Family, Protection of Motherhood and Childhood, will take charge of the meeting.

The event will consist of the plenary session, the panel conference “The forms of the cooperation of the church and state in the sphere of solving the issues of demography” and the conference on organizing of the joint pro-life and pro-family actions with the participating of the parents and the representatives of the social departments of the eparchies and the state institutions.

Within the festival such events as workshops, the charity fair, the presentation of social advertisements, the exposition of the stands of relevant organizations and, of course, the awarding and the presentation of the projects which got the prizes on the conference will take place.

The forum will be held as the part of the III International pro-family festival “Happiness is about children – 2014”, which will take place from the 16 to the 18 of May in the Belarusian town of Bobruisk. The event will gather the multi-child families from Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, the representatives of the non-governmental organizations and the state, clergy. The multi-child families will have the possibility to participate in various contests.

All the events from the program of the Festival will be oriented on the promotion of multi-child families, decreasing of the number of abortions and teaching the society to respect the traditional moral and spiritual values.

The Festival is being organized by the center of the support of the family, motherhood and childhood “Pokrova” with the aid of Bobruisk eparchy and Bobruisk municipality.

The organizing committee invites to participate in the Festival the public authorities, universities, secondary specialized colleges, the entities of the Orthodox Church, the representatives of the non-governmental organizations and the Orthodox Christian parishes, students, multi-child families (having 3 or more kids) and families with adopted children.

The applications from the state and church bodies are accepted till 1 May 2014.
The form of the application can be downloaded on the site of the Festival (pokrova.by). The applications and the auxiliary materials should be emailed to centr-pokrova@mail.ru.

During the Festival the participating families will be offered the accommodation and board in the Yubileynaya hotel.

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