Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin says the Lands of Holy Rus Could Change the Future of Mankind within a Decade
Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church’s Department for Church and Society, said that Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and other Orthodox countries are called upon to change all mankind, saying that although our Slav Orthodox Christian civilisation is not the largest, ‘it is still a key sector because we now know how to open the door to a better life for the whole world, especially in Europe. Fr Vsevolod made these remarks in Moscow on Monday 14 May during a Moscow-Kiev-Minsk video-link dedicated to the international events in Kiev scheduled for 28 July, the Day of the Baptism of Rus, presided over by Patriarch Kyrill of Moscow and all the Russias.
According to Fr Vsevolod, ‘the future of Europe lies not in London, Paris or Brussels, but in Kiev, Minsk, Moscow, Kishinev, Athens and Bucharest, ‘the cities that are the centres of the Orthodox civilisation. Today, we in Kiev, Minsk, and Moscow are more ‘European’ than Western countries. The West has departed from the ideals of Rome and Christendom. With this in mind, today, our civilisation should not succumb to the weak-willed West or to the intellectually-flabby East. We need not be dependent on others and be mere followers in the world dialogue of civilisations; we need to reunite intellect and will, tradition and innovation, faith and life, the spiritual and the so-called worldly. It is our duty to change the world in the space of a decade… and we can do it’.
He hoped that the celebration of the Baptism of Holy Rus in Russia, Belarus and the Ukraine would be an exciting event, ‘but most importantly… done with insight’, so that it would attract a large number of young people, to help them reflect on the fact that this feast ‘symbolises something much more important than economics, politics, or disputes over the details of State administration. All such mundane things change constantly, but we hope and believe that the vector of our people’s civilisational development will remain unchanged. Today, we have the call to build an Eastern Orthodox civilisation, which would hold the keys to the future of the world. If we do not, the alternative is the Apocalypse’.
14 May 2012
Interfax-Religion
