Moscow, January 25, 2011
Head of the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk considers the European Parliament Resolution accusing persecutions of Christians in the world a breakthrough.
"The EP resolution is a revolutionary one due to several moments. It is for the first time that the European parliamentarians stated in full voice their opinion on the problem they have preferred to keep silent about so far," the Metropolitan says in the commentary distributed in Moscow on Monday.
Adoption of the resolution, according to Metropolitan Hilarion, means that a major political body of the European Union has recognized the persecution of Christians in the world. "Earlier, only certain politicians have confined themselves to talks about certain violations of the rights of Christians in a particular country," the Metropolitan writes.
Now, he says, "they are talking openly of the strategy of some terrorist organizations and fundamentalist movements aimed at the destruction or ousting of Christians living in the Moslem countries as "the fifth column" of the West".
Besides, Metropolitan Hilarion further says, a thorough attention was paid for the first time to the work of people gathering objective information about persecution of Christians in the world. For instance, it was for the first time that information, according to which seventy-five Christians out of each one hundred were killed as a result of religious intolerance in recent years, was made public officially in a political platform of such a high level.
"This statistics is stunning," the Metropolitan stresses.
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