Metropolitan Kirill believes Orthodox Christians can pray before pan-Christian shrines in non-Orthodox churches

25 June 2008, 14:03

Moscow, June 25, Interfax - Head of the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad said that Orthodox believers can pray before all-Christian shrines in churches of other confessions.

"We should point out that Orthodox prayer before pan-Christian shrines in non-Orthodox churches is allowed and Orthodox Christians can attend non-Orthodox service," Metropolitan Kirill said at the Bishop's Council in Moscow.

According to him, "ordinary visit to the church or attending a divine service doesn't mean that an Orthodox Christian approves non-Orthodox teaching and liturgical traditions.

"An Orthodox Christian can't pray with other Christians when it provokes his conversion from Orthodoxy to other confession or schism," Metropolitan Kirill is quoted as saying by the Russian Church official website.

"Situation with schism or the union seems more dangerous because the boarders dividing the Churches are nor as clear and evident for ordinary people as in other cases," the DECR chairman said.

As to believers of other religions and confession visiting Orthodox churches, Metropolitan Kirill urged to remember "the great role of the church and divine service in preaching Orthodox faith." According to him, if Prince Vladimir's ambassadors had not been allowed to the service in St. Sophia Church in Constantinople, "Russia would not have become Orthodox."

Metropolitan Kirill reminded that the number of Russian Orthodox pilgrims to Christian shrines in the Holy Land, France, and Italy was annually growing. Many of these shrines are in non-Orthodox churches.

When Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia visited France in October 2007, he conducted a prayerful service before the Savior's Crown of Thorns in Notre Dame de Paris. Clerics of the Russian Orthodox Church regularly conduct Orthodox services before this shrine and say prayers in Church Slavonic and French.

Some mass media then wrote that an "Orthodox-Catholic service" was conducted before the Crow of Thorns during Alexy II's visit to Paris. However, Catholic Archbishop Andre Vingt-Trois of Paris and other hierarchs and priests of the French Catholic Church, who attended the cathedral during the patriarchal prayer service, venerated the Christian shrine after the Orthodox service was over.

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