Orthodoxy should become foundation of the country’s life, Patriarch Kirill Believes

Moscow, July 18, Interfax – Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia sets the Church a mission to bring Russians to real faith in God.

“There’s no point in pretending, in early 1990 we often baptized people who even didn’t know what was going on and we don’t know how they felt about it, perhaps it was a kind of fronde to precipitate authorities. And what happened to many of them? They abandoned the Church forever, they left,” the Patriarch said after the Liturgy in the Assumption cathedral of Moscow Kremlin.

According to him, on one hand, many people of the elder generation were not able to overcome atheistic heritage and haven’t come to God, on the other hand, “we’re facing the pressure of another atheism, atheism of flesh, basing on instinct, but capturing the whole person.”

The Patriarch stressed that today the Church faces “the hardest task” when it needs “to transfer Orthodox faith from the folklore level, where our contemporaries often place it, to the level of world outlook.”

“We will be able to call our people Orthodox only when a significant part of it, even the majority will motivate their actions with religious convictions, especially in professional field, in the field of politics,” he said.

The Patriarch said that the Church does not express political ideas, it speaks about “bringing fundamental values to life of people.”

“If they are preserved, then Russia will always be alive, the spiritual force of our person will always be preserved. And it is more important than any politics,” he summed up.

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