MOSCOW, FEB. 2, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Russia is seeing signs of Christian unity stirring.
Last Friday, for instance, a Christian ecumenical celebration was held on a large scale in St. Petersburg.
The event was held with an eye toward the just-ended Week of Prayer for Christian Unity and the 62nd anniversary of the lifting of the blockade of what was then Leningrad during World War II.
In statements to the religious agency Blagovect-info, Catholic Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, metropolitan of Moscow's Archdiocese of the Mother of God, spoke about this meeting of "ecumenical symphony on Nevski Avenue," referring to St. Petersburg's main traffic artery, where the celebration took place.
Some 200 people gathered in the Evangelical-Lutheran church there to attend the conference on "Christian Unity and Religious Tolerance." Russian Orthodox, Catholic and Lutheran representatives addressed the gathering.
During the conference, participants mentioned the imperative need to work as a whole and to give collective testimony to achieve unity. Subsequently, they went to the Catholic church of St. Ekaterina for an ecumenical prayer service.
Archbishop Kondrusiewicz, 60, said that the ceremony was conducted "in a sincere spirit of prayer of believers who desire to achieve unity in one same heart, as a symphony." He added: "And this prayer was heard by Christ."
Ryazan
After the religious celebration, a concert was held in St. Peter's Lutheran church with the participation of the orchestra and choir of the local conservatory, which performed the "Russian Requiem" dedicated to the blockade of Leningrad.
At the end of the concert, a banquet was held in the Ingri Evangelical Lutheran church.
"In this way, the former name of Nevski Avenue was corroborated in practice: the Avenue of Religious Tolerance," noted Archbishop Kondrusiewicz.
The ecumenical conference entitled "Is Christian Unity Needed?" was held in the city of Ryazan, located 200 kilometers (125 miles) from Moscow.
The event, in the Museum of the History of Youthful Movements, attracted representatives of the Catholic, Evangelical-Lutheran, Evangelical-Christian, Methodist, and Adventist churches and charismatics, as well as scholars and intellectuals.
A key point of the conference was the participants' written appeal to Ryazan city officials to help the effort for Christian unity.
"In the political and social conditions of modern Russia," the appeal said, "friendship and mutual respect among Christians of different confessions and denominations is more important than ever, making it necessary not to allow interconfessional hostilities, or proselytism or pretension to leadership in religious life flare up."
ZE06020222 - 2006-02-02
Permalink: http://www.zenit.org/article-15174?l=english
Seeds of Ecumenism Sprouting in Russia
Numerous Events Held for Christian Unity
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