Church official hopes new people in the State Duma will revive parliamentary processes

Moscow, December 22, Interfax – New political disposition in Russian State Duma proves viability of Russian authorities, the Moscow Patriarchate official believes.

“It’s evident that the State Duma is tuned to constructive work, there are many mature politicians in it, I know them very well and with some of them we have twenty years experience of communication and cooperation. At the same time there are many new faces in it and it gives hope for reviving parliamentary processes,” head of the Synodal Department for Church and Society Relations Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin told Interfax-Religion on Thursday.

According to him, any power reveals its strength and viability “not least by its capability to change inside, to attract new people even if they criticize what was done five, ten or twenty years ago.”

“I hope that constant renewal will help state authorities to provide true, not stagnant and thus fragile stability,” the priest said.

He expressed hope that in spite of great political diversity in current State Duma, care for Russia’s prosperity “will be more important than political, economical and personal discords, and people will have a chance to feel that their representatives in supreme power live with their interests, needs, hopes, their joys and worries.”

“The Russian Orthodox Church is maximally open to interaction with all committees and fractions of the State Duma. As I’ve already said, we have big experience of communicating with many politicians, now we’ll get acquainted with new people and discuss with “the widest range of questions important for the country and the world” as His Holiness the Patriarch said in his greeting letter to Sergey Naryshkin,” the interviewee of the agency said.

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