The Patriarch Preaches in Strasbourg
Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Alexy II spoke before the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and told the MPs that morality is more important than human rights. The Europeans did not argue with him, except for the august Lord Russell-Johnson, who took him to task on the rights of sexual minorities.
The patriarch's visit to Strasbourg coincided with one of the four times a year Chechens picket the Council of Europe with Ichkerian flags and portraits of Dzhokhar Dudaev, Zelimkhan Yandarbiev and Aslan Maskhadov. Their meeting was probably by chance, although the patriarch's entourage was certain that it was an expression of hostile intent toward the patriarch. PACE President Rene van der Linden met the patriarch in front of the Palace of Europe and they proceeded past the entire Russian delegation, accompanied by Russian State Duma member from the LDPR Leonid Slutsky. The patriarch is the first religious leader invited to address the PACE in the capacity of religious leader.
Van der Linden said in his introduction of the patriarch that he “shares the Council of Europe's adherence to basic rights.” Alexy II himself, however, immediately told the European parliamentarians that “Today, a split between human rights and morals and the justification of immoral behavior by human rights are occurring that are pernicious for European civilization.” Later, he told the Europeans that “Technological progress raises the question of human rights again. Religious people have something to say about bioethics, electronic identification and other developmental tendencies of technology that concern many people. A person should remain a person – not a good, not a controlled element in an electronic system, not an object for experimentation and not a semi-artificial organism.”
Every bloc in the parliamentary assembly was given the chance to ask the patriarch one question. In three of the blocs, Russians asked the questions, with LDPR member Slutsky speaking for the socialists, United Russia member Mikhail Margelov speaking for the European democrats and communist Sergey Sobko speaking for the United Left bloc.
There are no Russian members of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats and the People's Group, however. From those blocs, the patriarch first received a question about other religions in Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church's attitude toward the death penalty. The patriarch read a prepared statement that said that the Russian Orthodox Church is friendly to all confessions and opposed to all forms of murder, including abortion and execution. Then the patriarch was asked to explain the Church's opposition to gay parades. The patriarch read his reply again, but with great feeling. He stated that homosexuality is an illness and compared a gay parade to a parade of kleptomaniacs. The Russian delegate applauded. Other delegates noticeably did not.
Alexy II went on to say that Kosovo was holy to the Serbs and separation of that territory from Serbia would be insulting and humiliating to the Serbian people. Then he left, on his way to meet with Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica. Russian PACE delegate Margelov intends to run for president of the organization in January.
Mikhail Zygar; Pavel Korobov, Strasbourg
All the Article in Russian as of Oct. 03, 2007
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