The website rememberrussia.ru published an interview with Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, head of the Moscow Patriarchate’s department for external church relation and a member of the board of trustees of the Russkiy Mir Foundation. Metropolitan Hilarion spoke about the church’s work to cooperate with and support expatriates and about dialogue with international organizations concerning the persecution of Christians in various parts of the world.
– His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, speaking during the celebrations marking the 65th anniversary of the Department for External Church Relations, stressed that at the present stage the Church ‘has an enormous strata to work with, which is our compatriots’. What is done by the DECR to support our expatriates and what can be expected in the future?
– The supreme authority of the Russian Orthodox Church has instructed the Department for External Church Relations to carry out cooperation with and support for our expatriates living in the far-abroad countries.
Here in Moscow we do all we can to guide and adjust the work of all the concerned church and state structures engaged in supporting expatriates. I would like to speak briefly about the work carried out by the Department. First of all, among our partners in the task of support of our expatriates the important one is Russia’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs. It has become a good tradition for the Department and the Ministry’s department for work with expatriates to hold round-table conferences on cooperation between the Russian Church and expatriates living in various parts of the world. In 2009, such a conference took place in Brussels; it gathered together clergy and laity from European countries. In 2010, a meeting took place between clergy and representatives of expatriate organizations in Latin America. Last December, a round-table conference was held in Beijing; it was attended by people from the Asian region.
Considerable and fruitful work has been carried out together with the Russkiy Mir Foundation. We seek to give support to applicants whose projects are of ecclesial and public significance.
In recent times, we have developed cooperation with other structures concerned, such as the Federal Agency for the CIS, Expatriates and International Humanitarian Cooperation, Moscow Government, Moscow House of the Expatriate, St. Andrew the-First-Called Foundation, Solzhenitsyn House of the Russian Diaspora, Jordan Foundation for Aid to the Cadets, Commission for Coordination and Cooperation with Expatriates under the United Russia Party Presidium.
Among the important results of the joint efforts of the Church and state in supporting expatriates was the Law on Amendments to the Federal Law on the Policy of the State with Regard to Expatriates signed by President Medvedev in July 2010. For the first time, through the common church-state efforts, the role of religious organizations in the task of giving spiritual support to expatriates was legalized and the work of religious organizations was described as socially significant.
As far as prospects for church work to support expatriates is concerned, the DECR sees as its basic task to deepen cooperation between all parties concerned and to implement, together with governmental and public structures, the projects which promote consolidation between expatriates.
– Many of our Orthodox compatriots live abroad (both as a result of the collapse of the USSR and due to migration processes). Tell us please about the efforts made by the DECR to increase the number of parishes and institutions of the Moscow Patriarchate abroad. What has been achieved and what is planned by the DECR?
– The increase in the number of our compatriots abroad has resulted in an increase in the number of church structures outside the canonical territory of the Moscow Patriarchate. At present, we have at our disposal over 400 parishes in 52 countries in the far abroad, this not counting the parishes of the Russian Church Outside Russia. The geography of our parishes is vast. It includes countries with Christian tradition in which Christianity is part of the national culture and identity, first of all in Europe and in the American continent. But our Church also has parishes in the countries where Christianity comprises a minority. Among them are Thailand, Mongolia, India, Nepal, Iran, UAE, and many others.
I would like to say that in 2009 the terms of reference of the synodal structures of the Russian Orthodox Church changed. The Department for External Church Relations was oriented more on the work with foreign countries to become actually an analogue of a secular ministry for foreign affairs. The DECR’s terms of reference came to include, among other things, cooperation and work with expatriates, while parishes of the Russian Church in the far-abroad countries came under the jurisdiction of a specially established body, the Moscow Patriarchate Office for Institutions Abroad which is accountable directly to His Holiness the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia.
– Along with the pastoral care of expatriates, there is also a need to develop the parish public life. What areas does the DECR see in the task of rallying expatriates and supporting their Orthodox identity?
– Church parishes, being small islands of Holy Russia in foreign lands, become natural centers of the religious and cultural life of our brothers and sisters. At parishes people can worship together, talk at a tea hour about their pressing problems, initiate contacts. It should be noted that today we see the development of not only religious but also social activity of our parishes. And this, in the first place, is a result of the appearance of new people.
The cast of mind of today’s expatriates is changing. Among them there are ever more young and energetic people capable of developing parish life through their own efforts. The Church, on her part, seeks to send to foreign parishes young pastors capable of stirring up our communities to activity.
Parishes today exert considerable efforts to help expatriates to organically enter the social environment of their host country while seeking to preserve their religious and cultural identity. Parishes seek to establish Sunday schools and to help their compatriots master the vernacular, to find a job, to receive advice concerning legal and social matters.
It seems necessary to me that we should give special attention to this kind of parish work, which is of great importance for consolidating our diaspora. I believe this consolidation to be a very important task. First, for expatriates living in the far abroad, a consolidated diaspora helps to acquire quite a different weight in the local environment. Secondly, a strong diaspora is a serious resource for our own country as well since in expatriate communities there are people with a very pro-active stand in life and their skills can serve our Motherland.
– What is the state of affairs with regard to information resources (radio, television, printed and electronic mass media) of the Russian Church’s dioceses and parishes abroad?
– Russian Orthodox communities abroad have never been as rich as to afford TV channels of their own. At the same time, many of them have sought as much as they can to engage in information work. Diocesan and parochial media have made a considerable contribution to the consolidation of expatriates from historical Rus’.
The first printed editions appeared at a very early stage in the Orthodox Russian diaspora. These were newspapers, magazines, parish sheets. Some of them were published for decades, others came out for a short period of time, but all played their role in strengthening the ties of Russian
