Fr Lavrenty with His Parishioners (Alina Bulyga, 2007). As one can see from this recent photograph, young people are a large chunk, if not the majority of believers.
Today, old ladies are a minority in the Russian Orthodox congregations, according to Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, the Deputy Chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations. “The situation has changed dramatically. It didn’t happen all at once, in the early 90s, but, it started about eight to ten years ago. Old ladies became a minority, at least in the parish where I serve,” he said on a broadcast carried on Finam FM. Fr Vsevolod noted, in his experience, “When I give communion to people during divine liturgy on Sundays or feastdays, old women constitute only about 20 to 30 percent of the communicants, the majority is made up of young families with children. This is a typical situation in many places, not just in Moscow. For example, I saw that less than a half of the congregation at a service in an Arkhangelsk parish on an ordinary weekday were grannies, on a day when most of the people had to be at work”. Fr Vsevolod pointed up the important role of the media in making young people permanent parishioners of Orthodox parishes in recent years. “The situation has changed. I would say that, in no small measure, it is due to the people who speak about Orthodoxy and Christ in the media,” he said.
16 December 2008
Interfax-Religion
http://www.interfax-religion.ru/?act=news&div=27902
