Source: interfax-religion.com

Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia

What the Church will oppose to the attacks against it, how believers should protect their shrines, whether it is necessary to toughen punishment for insulting religious feelings, what migration policy is preferable and what the main threat for Russia is. Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia answers these and other questions in exclusive interview to Interfax-Religion correspondents Alexey Sosedov and Valentina Trubetskaya.

Your Holiness, we will remember the last year for numerous anti-church actions. What conclusions did the Church make in this connection, what did it bring out of this experience?

– “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun” – are Ecclesiastes’ well-known words (Ecclesiastes 1:9). It is not surprising for the Church to face the actions aimed at violating and insulting shrines and religious feelings. Christianity all through two thousand years of its history lived through various oppressions – from Roman emperors’ persecutions of early Christian Church to mass murders of clergy and believers in Soviet years. And what about nowadays campaigns against Christian symbols in public places, which we witness to in European countries? Isn’t it a persecution of Christians under slogans of secular state sometimes brought to absurdity?

The anti-church campaigns that took place in 2012 are consequences of the strengthening of the Church positions and influence in society. People’s confidence in the church and the …continue reading at interfax-religion.com