Patriarch Kirill calls on Bulgarian PM to base policies on Orthodox Christian values

Sofia, May 2, Interfax – Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia has said he attaches great importance to the fact that Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov is an Orthodox Christian.

“I sympathize with your Orthodox Christian choice and would like to wish God’s help in your service and that your connection with the Orthodox Church manifest, among other things, in the defense of the Orthodox Christian values,” the Patriarch said at a meeting with Borisov in Sofia on Saturday.

It is important that Borisov is an Orthodox Christian, the Orthodox Christianity is “not just customs and traditions” but also a world view and system of values, he said.

Today, one of the dangers facing the Christian civilizations, including the European one, is that the Christian values are being interpreted as “something that had meaning in the past and has stopped being relevant today,” Patriarch Kirill said.

“And these values are being ousted by new values not connected with the Christian tradition, which primarily proclaim full autonomy of the individual and the human ability to decide what is good and what is bad. This is called freedom, but there is an enormous danger in this concept of freedom because there as many heads as there are minds,” Patriarch Kirill said.

If there is no common understanding of what is good and what is bad, the human society “will be atomized and easily controlled by information and financial flows,” he said.

Hence the rise in crime, moral crisis, break-up of families, alcoholism, drug addiction, violence, the Patriarch said.

The fundamental issues concerning the human personality and what is happening with modern-day man today “should be at the center of attention of any statesman,” he said.

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