‘Russia’s spiritual revival might inspire’ Western Europe
7/5/13
The spiritual revival of Russia might inspire Christians in Western European countries that have adopted anti-religious laws’.
This was stated by head of the Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill after a service at the Novodevichy Monastery in Moscow to celebrate the anniversary of the return to the Church of the Iberian Mother of God icon.
The Patriarch regrets that many countries in Western Europe are legalizing sins condemned by God. In ancient Russia, the Iberian icon stayed in the Novodevichy Monastery for three centuries. Since 1917, it was kept in reserves of the State Historical museum.
On May 6 last year, it was returned to Novodevichy Monastery.
Pray that this does come to pass.
And yet, post-Communist Russia has an abortion rate beyond even the US and is aggressively secular, with politicians like Putin recognizing the power and influence that the Orthodox Church wields and makes huge efforts to win over Kirill to his political moves and decisions. Makes one wonder how Kirill defines “spiritual revival”?
In Moscow at Pascha this year, according to police figures, 300,000 people came to church on Holy Saturday during the day and for the Paschal Vigil. Probably at least half of those people came only to have baskets of Paschal foods blessed. Moscow is a city of at least 12 million inhabitants. That means that less than 2% of the population came to church for any religious reason. People in Western Europe do not find this is real evidence of a “religious revival”. Russia remains a deeply non-Christian society.
Most Western Europeans would also find the collusion between the Church and State in Russia, in defiance of the constitutional separation of the same, to be anti-religious. The Church always ends off the loser in such situations – Kirill looks increasingly like a pawn in the power games being played by Putin and his cronies.
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