V. Legoida:“Media must encourage reconciliation instead of fomenting conflict”

Moscow, May 21, 2014

Chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Synodal Information Department Vladimir Legoida is disappointed with the attempts of a part of the Ukrainian media to show the Russian Orthodox Church as a participant of the civil conflict in the Ukraine.

“Unfortunately, the imagination of some of our colleagues does not extend further than “absolutely unexpectedly” publishing several different texts on the same day, which make strikingly identical conclusions: the Church is to blame. In these texts real facts are interpreted in such a boldly fabulous manner that there is, alas, no more space for common sense: what can be more absurd than portraying the natural, and in fact the only current peace-maker as the main aggressor?” noted V.R. Legoida.

The Church representative has stressed that over the period of the confrontation many people have become accustomed to classifying others into only two categories: “friends” and “enemies”, not imagining that someone else might see the world not in the light of political conflict. “They are trying to draw the Church into this confrontation at any price, not realizing that the nature of the Church rules out the possibility of such an involvement and that its position is only constructive in the situation when no political or other public force has nationwide legitimacy. All this makes the Church an indispensable participant in the process of a peaceful settlement,” said V. Legoida.

V.R. Legoida has also noted that when certain public forces try to ascribe to the Church something other than concern for peace in the Ukraine, they consciously misrepresent the role the Church plays in the life of people and society, and thus are apparently aggravating the situation, which is already difficult.

Pravoslavie.ru

5/23/2014

See also
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