Showing posts with label Russia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Russia. Show all posts

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Russia Jehovas Witness Leader Gets 2 Years in Jail

Moscow (AsiaNews/F18) – Alexander Kalistratov, chairman of the Gorno-altaisk chapter of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, was convicted for possession of “extremist” literature, and given a two-year prison sentence. The sentence is final, and Kalistratov’s only recourse is the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) where his lawyer filed on appeal arguing that his conviction was religiously motivated.

The original charges were laid after it was determined that he possessed copies of Jehovah’s Witnesses publications like Watchtower and Awake, whose opinions, according to the court, were “extremist” even if solely religious in nature. For this reason, local experts told the Forum 18 news agency that the court convicted him for his religious beliefs.

For Attorney Viktor Zhenkov, it is surprising that it took the court just three working days to rule on the matter even if the case includes 13 volumes of evidence.


Link to original..

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Russians Pilgrims Walking from Irkutsk to Jerusalem

14 September 2010, 17:27
Pilgrims going from Irkutsk to Jerusalem on foot covered about 3,000 km

Petropavlovsk, September 14, Interfax – Two residents of Irkutsk, who are carrying out a pilgrimage to Jerusalem on foot, arrived in Petropavlovsk in northern Kazakhstan, an Interfax correspondent reported.

Irkutsk Cossacks captain Vladimir Bragintsev, former policeman, now pensioner, started for a long journey on May 8 in Siberia, novice of St. Michael the Archangel Monastery Alexander Serebrennikov jointed him a little bit later. For more than four months pilgrims walked about 3,000 kilometers, visited Krasnoyarsk, Kemerovo, Novosibirsk, Omsk and other Russian cities and towns.

The pilgrims are going to walk to Jerusalem and worship Christian shrines.

The pilgrims have ordinary tourist set in their rucksacks – a tent, sleeping bags, a pot, matches, food supplies and a medicine box. They buy food on the way taking money from the banking card.

The pilgrims often sleep in the wood in their tent, but sometimes strangers give them a warm reception.

Bragintsev believes his trip to Jerusalem will take him not less that four years, but on his way he dreams of visiting Solovki and Valaam to pray for his relatives killed at World War II.

Link to Interfaxreligion...

Monday, September 13, 2010

Parents organizations urge to bar sexual minorities' march in Petersburg

St. Petersburg, September 13, Interfax – Representatives of parent organizations ask authorities to ban gay pride parade planned by sex minorities for September 16-25 in Petersburg.

"They failed to conquer Moscow and hold a gay pride there and like fascists in 1941 they have focused all their effort on the city on the Neva. Today as before a blue division is moving to the "Northern capital", but it is not a "blue-blood" Aryan race," Russia's Council of Parents and Association of Parent Committees and Communities told the country's authorities in their open letter.

Its authors note that in fact "an open, legalized and effective promotion of vice and depravity" will take place in the city for ten days and this time will be enough "to ruin souls of thousands children and teens." They point out that many "international sodomite organizations, notorious gays and lesbians" have already backed up the festival.

"We are not ready to tolerate preachers of filth and perversion in our country as they have always been considered shameful in Russia. People who live with this passion should not bring their spiritual illness out in the streets of our cities and infect our children with it," the

letter reads.

Link to original...

Friday, September 10, 2010

Public movement asks to crown the Kremlin Spasskaya Tower with double-headed eagle

Moscow, September 10, Interfax - Participants of the Vozvrascheniye (Return) public movement turned to the Russian President with the request to take away a five-point star from the Kremlin Spasskaya Tower and to set up a double-headed eagle there.

"We're convinced that now after returning an icon of the Savior, it is necessary to erect a double-headed eagle - state emblem of new Russia - to the Spasskaya Tower," activists said in their address conveyed to Interfax-Religion on Friday.

They remind that on October 24 it will be exactly 75 years since the day when a double-headed eagle was thrown down from the Spasskaya Tower where it had been located from mid 17th century.

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Monday, August 30, 2010

200 Churches Will Be Built in Moscow

After almost a century of socialism, Russians are going to Mass again and finding hope. Everywhere else, Christianity seems to be in retreat, but Russia is the great contradiction.

200 new Orthodox churches will be built in Moscow in the next 30 years, says a project considered by Moscow's Mayor Yuri Luzhkov and the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill.

They discussed changes in Moscow's architecture which also includes building new churches.

According to Kirill, 90 percent of Muscovites are Orthodox and altogether they need some 590 new churches.


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Saturday, August 21, 2010

41 Percent of Russians Against Abortion

Russia. [kreuz.net] 41 percent of the Russians want the inhuman law, that allows abortion in Russia, corrected. This figure is a result of a poll by the public opinion institute 'Levada'. In Russia there are one million registered abortions a year. In the past, the parliament has recommended better legal protection for unborn children.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Russians Forced to Confront Implications of Large Number of ‘Ethnic Orthodox’

Paul Goble

Russians for a long time have dismissed many of the traditionally Islamic peoples of their country as “ethnic Muslims,” a term that refers to the fact that, as a result of Soviet anti-religious policies and modernization, many members of these nations identify as Muslims but neither know much about Islam or practice the faith.

Now, largely in reaction to a new poll, Russians and especially Russian religious leaders are having to focus on the reality that alongside “ethnic Muslims,” there appear to be an increasing number of “ethnic Orthodox” Russians who identify with the religion but neither know much about it or take part in religious practice.

The confrontation with that somewhat uncomfortable reality has at least two serious consequences. On the one hand, it calls into question the claims the Moscow Patriarchate makes and that some in the Russian government accept that the Russian Federation is genuinely “an Orthodox Christian” country.

Link to Georgian Daily...

Monday, February 15, 2010

The Growing Power of the Orthodox


MOSCOW, Russia — Priests serving with military units, religious classes in public schools, even blessings at national hockey games — this is the face of the new Russian Orthodox Church.

Following years of steady post-communism revival, the church saw an explosive growth in its activities and state role last year. Now critics warn that the growth is coming at the expense of religious freedom in the country, with many faiths under attack.

In an annual report on religious freedom released in late January, the Moscow-based Liberty of Conscience Institute said the relationship between the church and the state had become “symbiotic,” violating the constitution and leading to widespread discrimination against religious minorities.

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Monday, January 25, 2010

In Russia the Path to Unity is Defrosting

Anyone who knows us and has been following us knows that we've been predicting this for some time.

Neville Kyrke-Smith has visited Eastern Europe for the past 25 years. Now, he believes the end of the schism with the Orthodox is in sight

"The Lefebvrists, the Anglicans... will it be the Orthodox next?" asked one slightly bewildered Catholic priest recently. Pope Benedict XVI is turning out to be ecumenically audacious. For this he has faced criticism, misunderstanding and accusations of insensitivity. But Pope Benedict and Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church seem now to be making progress in preparing the ground to overcome the Great Schism of 1054.

When I was in Russia late last year the Nuncio, Archbishop Antonio Mennini, commented on the imperative aim of both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI to build "a dialogue of truth and charity" with the Orthodox. He emphasised how vital this was and thanked Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) for its work in supporting Catholic, Orthodox and ecumenical projects in Russia:

"We have to encourage the Catholic community to show solidarity to the Orthodox. The initiative of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI is so important. Thank you for all that the charity does for the Church and for building relations with the Orthodox, in line with the will of the Holy Father... and Our Lord!"

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Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Russia's Health Minister Called for Reduction in Abortions: Population Growth Too Low

By Patrick B. Craine

MOSCOW, Russia, January 18, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Russia's Health Minister has called for a reduction of abortions in the country as a way of improving its meagre population growth.

"The topic of reducing abortions is definitely on today's agenda,” stated Health Minister Tatyana Golikova on Monday. “This won't solve the birthrate problem 100 percent, but around 20 to 30 percent."

In 2006, then-President Vladimir Putin identified the country's low birth rate as its greatest problem, though he did not draw the connection with the country's abortion rate, which is among the highest in the world. In 2005, in fact, there were more abortions than births in the country. On Monday, Golikova noted that in 2008 there were 1.714 million births and 1.234 million abortions.

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Thursday, December 24, 2009

Wave of Clergy Killings in Russia

Voice of America

The second murder of a Russian priest in as many months has prompted a call by the Orthodox Church for Russians to think about their country's spiritual and moral condition. The killings follow more violence this year directed against Muslim clerics in Russia's troubled Caucasus region.

Tuesday's shooting death of 39-year-old priest Alexander Filippov is alleged to be the act of two intoxicated men in the village of Satino-Russkoye near Moscow. His widow is quoted as saying Filippov had reproached the suspects for relieving themselves at the entrance of their apartment building.

The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, called Filippov a bright and clean-living individual who leaves behind three daughters.

Kirill says the priest was killed because he was not indifferent to disgusting human behavior and took a principled stand against it in accordance with his calling.

The Interfax News Agency says a total of 26 Orthodox priests have been murdered in Russia since 1990. Many others have been assaulted. They include Vitaly Zubkov, who was kicked and beaten last month, just days after the murder of his friend, Father Daniil Sysoyev in Moscow. Sysoyev had received death threats for his outspoken criticism of Islam and attempts to convert Muslims to Christianity.

News reports quote Orthodox Church Spokesman Vladimir Legoida as saying that recent events show Russians must think of the spiritual and moral situation they live in.

The head of the Religion and Law Institute at the Russian Academy of Sciences, Roman Lunkin, told VOA many Russians call themselves Orthodox Christians but have no idea about the obligations required by organized religion. He says Russian spiritual leaders themselves often set the wrong example by mixing church-state relations.

Lunkin says church leaders send a signal that to call oneself an Orthodox, it is enough to maintain close ties with the state or government officials and to participate in official ceremonies. He says this reveals an absence of true faith, adding that priests often begin with the construction of a church building, instead of first organizing a community of believers.

Lunkin says communism stripped many Russians of religious faith, and with it any respect for priests and churches.

Lunkin recalls an incident several years ago when a priest began building a church in the Ivanovo region north of Moscow and arrived one morning to find that local residents had dismantled the structure for its bricks because there was no organized community in that village and no one knew what Orthodoxy was. He adds that local hooligans who killed the priest considered themselves to be Orthodox.

Russia's Islamic community has also been rocked this year by several high-profile killings of Muslim clerics in the Caucasus. They include Akhmed Tagayev, deputy mufti of Dagestan, and Ismail Bostanov, rector of the Islamic Institute in the southern Karachai-Cherkessia region.

Some observers link those murders to Islamic militants who are fighting pro-Kremlin authorities. The deputy head of Russia's Mufti Council, Damir Khazrat Gizatullin rejects any connection. He told VOA he attributes the violence to incivility throughout Russia stemming from 70 years of communist rule.

Gizatullin says people in Russia do not know how to listen to one another, to give others the right away on the road, or to understand the foundations of spirituality and religion. This, he concludes, leads to current situation, which follows 70 years of alienation from the spiritual roots and traditions of Russia. He says people now fail to realize that members of the clergy and all others are protected by the Almighty and by the law.

He says Communists also made the mistake of focusing on the construction of buildings at the expense of community.

Gizatullin says Soviet authorities wanted to construct more living space for people, but toilets and other communal structures were forgotten. He says there was no time, no energy, and no resources for such things, and now Russia is reaping those elements of Soviet life.

Murders of prominent Russians are not limited to the clergy. Investigative journalists and political activists have also been victims. Most of the killers remain at large.

Link to original...

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Moscow Bound Train Attacked by Terrorists

BBC

Rescue workers are searching for survivors of a Russian express train crash who may be trapped in wreckage.

The government says 25 people are known to have died in the derailment, amid speculation that it may have been caused by a bomb blast.

Earlier, one official reported that 39 people had died, but that has now been denied by the authorities.

The train, travelling from Moscow to St Petersburg, crashed on Friday night near Bologoye town in Tver region.

About 90 people were injured as at least three carriages of the express train came off the tracks as it travelled on one of Russia's busiest rail links.


An investigation is under way into the cause of the crash. A small crater at the scene of the wreck has raised suspicions of sabotage.

"Several versions are being considered. It must be just a pit someone dug out. Or the crater was left by an explosive device," a law enforcement official was quoted by Itar-Tass news agency as saying.

Some witnesses heard a loud bang before the crash, Russian media reports said.

In 2007, a bomb on the same line derailed a train, injuring nearly 30 passengers.

Link to article...BBC

Also, another very successful and charismatic young Orthodox priest was shot dead in his own Church. He was himself of Tartar descent and was very active prosylitizing among Muslims.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

New Uzbek Moves against Soviet and Orthodox Symbols a Challenge for Russia

Georgia Daily

November 23, 2009
Paul Goble

Tashkent’s decision to remove monuments glorifying Soviet military achievements and to tear down a Russian Orthodox church there dating from 1898 in the first instance reflects the Uzbek government’s desire to take greater control over its own national destiny.

But the combination of these actions – one Moscow newspaper suggested today that they were “removing the traces of the USSR and of Orthodoxy” from that Central Asian republic – create more than usual problems for Russia because it raises questions about the relationship of the Soviet and Russian past in the future.

And that relationship is increasingly sensitive not only in the ethnically charged atmosphere in the Russian population but also as President Dmitry Medvedev seeks to maintain the former Soviet space as a Russian sphere of influence even while pursuing closer relations with the Western powers.

Over the weekend, “Komsomolskaya Pravda” reported today, the Uzbek authorities demolished or moved away monuments that formed part of the Park of Military Glory that the Soviet authorities had set up in 1973 and tore down an Orthodox church as part of a plan to build a new government administration building (kp.ru/daily/24398/575153/).

Link to original...

Monday, November 23, 2009

Let's Face it: Russia is Dying

Some of us look hopefully at a resurgence of the Orthodox Faith in Russia as part of the promise Our Lady has made to convert Russia, yet Russia is dying. No consecration of Russia has happened yet, but there are signs and expectations. What seems to be the case is that no one but Our Lady can save her.

Telegraph Blogs

The BBC reports that Mr Bill Browder, head of a company called Hermitage Capital and once the largest foreign investor in Russia, has now described that large and empty country as “essentially a criminal state”. One’s first reaction is that Mr Browder, who has had far better opportunities for observation than most of us, has taken rather a long time to realise this. But then none of us has been particularly quick off the mark in grasping what has been right in front of our noses for years. Their representatives are still polluting the G8, the Council of Europe and other supposedly civilised institutions. We still pretend politely to take Mr Vladimir Putin seriously.

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See especially Pat Buchanan's Death of the West.

Also see, St. Jean Raspail.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Russian Church is to suspend its dialogue with German Lutherans

German Lutherans must not have much of a commitment to ecumenical dialogue if they're so insensitive as to ordain a female Bishop as they've done recently. It can't bode well either that the Swedish Lutheran Church has ordained a female homosexual either. Lines are being drawn in this battle, and it looks like dying protestant denominations are doing almost as much for the Catholic cause as Benedict by making an infernal marriage with the spirit of the post-modern age.

Moscow, November 12, Interfax – The Russian Orthodox Church is ready to suspend the dialogue with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Germany after woman bishop Margot Kaessmann has become its leader.

“We planned to celebrate the 50th anniversary of our dialogue with the Lutheran Church in Germany in late November or early December. The 50th anniversary of the dialogue will become the end of it,” head of the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations Archbishop Hilarion of Volokolamsk was quoted as saying by the Kommersant daily on Thursday.

Archbishop Hilarion reminded that Orthodoxy did not accept female priesthood.

“We can develop the dialogue, but there raise lots of simple protocol questions. How will the Patriarch address her or meet with her?” the Russian Church representative said.

Kaessmann, 51, a divorced mother of four daughters, was elected head of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Germany, which unites over twenty Lutheran and Reformed Churches, during the Synod held on October 28.

Russian Lutherans supported the Moscow Patriarchate official’s statement and agreed that female episcopate is a sign of crisis in the Western society.

“We don’t have women bishops as introducing such an institute is not a Biblical action,” general secretary of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Ingria (Russia) Fr. Alexander Prilutsky said.

Link to article...

Meeting possible between Pope, Patriarch Kirill - Archbishop Hilarion

Moscow, November 12, Interfax - Relations between the Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches are improving and a meeting between Pope Benedict XVI and the Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, may be on the cards, a Russian Orthodox bishop said.

"Today it can be said that we are moving to a moment when it becomes possible to prepare a meeting between the Pope and the Patriarch of Moscow," Archbishop Hilarion of Volokolamsk, the head of the Department for External Church Relations, told reporters in Moscow.

"There are no specific plans for the venue or timing of such a meeting but on both sides there is a desire to prepare it," the Archbishop said.

Preparations for such a meeting must involve finding "a common platform on all remaining points of dispute," the Archbishop said.

One such issue are relations between the Uniate community and Orthodox believers in Ukraine. In the early 1990s, "the fragile interdenominational balance was upset and a serious situation took shape that still exists," Archbishop Hilarion said.

At the same time, conversion of Orthodox believers into Catholicism is less of a problem today than it was a decade ago, he said.

Benedict XVI is "a very reserved, traditional man who does not seek the expansion of the Catholic Church to traditionally Orthodox regions," the Archbishop said.

When Benedict XVI, shortly after being elected Pope, met with Metropolitan Kirill (the present Russian Patriarch, then head of the DECR, a papal visit to Russia "was taken off the agenda as now it appears to us to be impossible," the bishop said.

After Metropolitan Kirill has been elected Patriarch, "one can hope for further steps" in Orthodox-Catholic dialogue because the Patriarch "will continue the line on relations with Christians of other denominations that he pursued as part of his former activities," the Archbishop said.


Link to article...

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Orthodoxy again becoming Russia's State Religion

by Christopher A. Ferrara

Two recent developments remind us of the centrality of Russia in the future of our troubled world. In the first, as reported by The New York Times in mid-August, Russian nuclear-powered submarines have been detected patrolling off the eastern seaboard of the United States, “a rare mission that has raised concerns inside the Pentagon and intelligence agencies about a more assertive stance by the Russian military… [and] has echoes of the cold war era, when the United States and the Soviet Union regularly parked submarines off each other’s coasts to steal military secrets, track the movements of their underwater fleets — and be poised for war.” (New York Times, 4 August 2009).

The Times, quoting a naval historian, notes that there had not been any Russian subs in that class off the United States coast for about fifteen years. “Anytime the Russian Navy does something so out of the ordinary it is cause for worry,” said a senior Defense Department official quoted in the piece. “We’re concerned just because they are there,” he added.

The second development, which has been underway since 2006, is that Russian pupils in the regions of Belgorod, Bryansk, Kaluga and Smolensk “will be taught the basics of Orthodox Christianity” in the classroom, and that the subject will also be included as an option “in the school curriculum in 11 other regions across the country.” (BBC, 31 August 2006). It seems that “lawmakers in the 15 regions backed the move” even though it would appear to contradict the requirement of state secularity in the Russian constitution. Russian Education Minister Andrei Fursenko is quoted as saying that “schoolchildren must know the history of religion and religious culture.”

What are we to make of these developments? On the human level, together they indicate a program already observed in this column: Putin’s harnessing of Russian Orthodoxy to nationalism in a rebirth of Russia as a dominant geopolitical player — a project that also includes the rehabilitation of Stalin as a “great leader.” The idea that Putin wants to convert Russia into a nation of pious and prayerful Orthodox is laughable. There is no sign that Russia has turned away from its binge of abortion, alcohol and divorce.

Then again, in God’s providence what is happening in the Russian schools and her military buildup could both be a material preparation — quite unintended by their proponents — for the true conversion of Russia and her reunion with Rome to save the West in the midst of some dire scenario like the one predicted by the Russian mystic and philosopher Vladimir Soloviev at the turn of the 20th Century.

All things work together in the divine plan, whether or not God’s rebellious subjects freely cooperate in it. Thus there is reason to hope that, whatever Putin intends, Russia is being prepared for its consecration and the consequent Triumph of the Immaculate Heart — an event that, as Antonio Socci has so eloquently put it, will mean “a radical and extraordinary change in the world, an overthrow of the mentality dominating modernity, probably following dramatic events for humanity.” Clearly, those dramatic events are very near.

Link to article...