Patriarch Kirill Gundyaev of Moscow and all the Russias (1946- ) speaking in Armenia, Patriarch-Catholicos Karekin Narsessian (1952- ) looks on at right
Patriarch Kirill Gundyaev of Moscow and all the Russias expressed his scepticism of the idea of political pluralism. “This ideal of political pluralism is not our idea, it’s not the Church’s idea”, His Holiness said on Thursday at a meeting with faculty and students ay Yerevan State University. He said that he was well aware that such a statement could cause a firestorm of criticism from journalists. “Nevertheless, to put it bluntly, it’s nothing but a toy, a fad, a fleeting sensation. Today, it seems reasonable… but all that they’re doing is playing with their toys. Play… play… but somebody has to think about unity over and above political factions”, he added.
In his view, social life and “a particular public consciousness evolved in Russia over some three hundred years, and, then, the Revolution and Civil War upended it all”. Meanwhile, he said, “The values and traditions of the Christian faith were common for all of the peoples. Patriarch Kirill pointed up that the main task of the Orthodox Church in Russia, which kept its unity despite the political developments of the 1990s, “is to preserve the integrity of the spiritual space of Holy Russia, which emerged from the baptismal font of Kiev. This common spiritual space is independent of political geography. It may or may not coincide with political borders”. In this way, he said, the spiritual space of the Armenian people is not limited by the borders of today’s Armenian state, “but the Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of All Armenia unites the entire nation”.
18 March 2010
Interfax-Religion
Voices from Russia 
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