President of Russia Vladimir Putin (center) during a meeting with leaders of the religious organizations and associations, July 3, 2006
Photo: Dmitry Azarov
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Spiritual Commander-in-Chief
// Vladimir Putin calls a summit of religious leaders
Religious leaders converged on Moscow yesterday to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Kommersant special correspondent Andrey Kolesnikov was there and was glad to see that they ended the first day of the spiritual summit meeting without hostilities.
Half an hour before the meeting was to begin, about 20 elderly Orthodox Christian women bearing banners and crosses protested in front of the Hotel President. They called the meeting deceitful and considered it evil for all world religions to come together, even for a few days in one building. People of goodwill would have to fight the fruits of that meeting for a long time to come, they said.
The meeting took place any way. The meeting is being called summit, since the leaders of all the world's religions are gathering in Moscow. Practically all the leaders who were invited came. But it still can't be called a summit, because not all religious leaders were invited. The Pope and Dalai Lama were not on the guest list. Metropolitan Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church said that two so major events as the Pope coming to Moscow and the leaders of the world's religions gathering could not be mixed, apparently lest one overshadow the other.
Chief Rabbi of Russia Berl Lazar, member of the Interconfessional Council of Russia, one of the main organizers of the event, told me that there originally were plans to include the Dalai Lama, but those plans were changed. “It is a political decision,” Lazar told me. “I do not agree with it. Politics should not interfere with these things.”
Five Roman Catholic cardinals were in attendance at the meeting.
The line to pass through the metal detector to enter the conference hall at the hotel (where most of the attendees are staying) was long. After depositing their keys and cell phones on the plastic tray, nearly all the guests set the metal detector off with their ritual paraphernalia – crosses, crosiers, medals and so on. First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (who was accompanied by Metropolitan Kirill) were among the last to arrive.
Patriarch Alexiy II of Moscow and All Russia waited to enter with the president, half an hour later. The patriarch explained to those in attendance that their meeting was part of the preparations for the G8 summit in St. Petersburg. Then the Russian president spoke, noting that the last time such a forum met was 25 years ago, also in Moscow, and that “it was a forum in defense of peace.” The world is being engulfed in a conflict of civilizations does not yet understand what to do about it, the president continued. But “the ideals of terror are built upon the religious illiteracy of the simple people,” since no religion, if you understand it, encourages terror.
“It is very important to begin constructive work to bring our positions closer together,” Putin told his audience around the circular table. They looked at him with half-closed eyes. “And the goal cannot be a mechanical, mindless unification, sometimes, forgive me, stupid!”
Metropolitan Kirill read the greetings to the summit from UN General Secretary Kofi Annan.
Ayatollah Muhammad Ali Taskhiri asked the leaders what could be “more excellent than this meeting, a meeting of hearts, a meeting at which we will combat terrorism and injustice” and said that terrorism was not caused by religious illiteracy but by poverty. “If you solve that problem, you will solve al the others,” he said. The Iranian ayatollah thanked the organizers of the event “for the honor of appearing in the name of Islamic leaders from Kuwait, Syria, Bahrain, Kyrgyzstan… and also of all the people of Africa, Asia and America.”
Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel Yona Metzger thanked Russia thanked Russia for freeing itself from Communism (and thereby increasing the population of Israel by almost a quarter) and expressed his “sympathy for the Russian people in connection with the savage murders of the Russian diplomats in Baghdad.”
The rabbi told a parable about how the whole world is in one boat and reminded those present of Abraham: “He is our father. He is sitting and watching us.”
“You have to have respect for every faith,” he continued, then added, “whatever it may be like.” Then he went on to speak of the recent murder of an unarmed teenage boy in Israel. “And if the demands of the terrorists are not met, another one of our boys will be killed tomorrow. And what about that dialog that Ayatollah Taskhiri spoke of so excellently? How can they do that?!”
Then the rabbi suggested the foundation of “an international organization like the UN for religious communities, with permanent representatives.” “Our forefather Abraham will like that,” he said.
Supreme Buddhist Patriarch Tep Vong of Cambodia said that “if all people followed the teachings of Buddha, there would be no conflicts at all.
After that, Alexiy II closed the first day of the meeting, blessing those gathered in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Andrey Kolesnikov
All the Article in Russian as of July 04, 2006
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