12 October 2005, 15:54
Metropolitan Kirill: world summit of religious leaders to take place in Moscow next July
Moscow, September 12, Intefax – World summit of religious leaders will take place in Moscow on 4-5 July, 2005, Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, Head of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, said at briefing on Wednesday.
According to him, the interreligious summit will be held before the meeting of the G8 summit in St.Petersburg.
‘The experience of interreligious cooperation in Russia is unique. It will be helpful to bring it to the attention of international community’, Metropolitan Kirill stated.
He underscored that the opinion of Russian religious leaders on such problems as the struggle against terrorism is most important.
Leaders and representatives of the Local Orthodox Churches, of the so called Non-Chalcedonean Churches, such as Coptic, Armenian and others, as well of those of the Roman Catholic Church are supposed to take part in the religious summit.
Metropolitan Kirill expressed his hope for the Vatican to be represented on the top level.
According to the Metropolitan, the forum sponsors hope for the attendance of the Chinese religious leaders. Invited are representatives the Evangelical Church in Germany, the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, chief rabbis of Israel, the USA and some European countries, Muslim leaders of the CIS countries, Middles East and Arabian peninsula, the Buddhists, Hinduists, as well the leaders of the World Council of Churches and other international religions organizations.
The forum organizers expect that the Moscow summit will play ‘an important part in the prevention of extremism on religious and ethnical ground’, the head of the Department of External Church Relations said.
‘Stability and international cooperation will largely depend of the relations among religions, between secular philosophy and traditional values ‘, Metropolitan Kirill emphasized.