International Orthodox Christian News

Moscow, December 16, Interfax - The Russian Orthodox Church claims that some persons are setting up the Diomid-2 project aimed by provocative acts and blackmail to influence the Local Council which shall be convened to elect a new head of the Orthodox Church.

"Diomid-2 is in the pipeline. There are three people in Holy Orders who intend to issue a booklet stating that our Church hierarchy is on too close terms with the Catholics, which is really dreadful," Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, Deputy Head of the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations, told in a live radio broadcast of Finam FM.

He said that these people blamed the Church hierarchy of reading "joint prayers" with the Catholics. The priest, however, reminded that the Bishops' Council of the Russian Orthodox Church convened in June, 2008 had criticized "experimental prayers and rituals which mix different Christian traditions, and different religions, all the more."

Fr. Vsevolod believes that "simply put, it would be untrue to say that the Church conducted joint prayers with the Catholics sometime, and this still remains an indelible stain on the Church's reputation."

Besides, according to Fr. Vsevolod, the reunification of the Catholics and Protestants with the Orthodox Church today "is becoming increasingly unlikely, in particular, in the Protestant world ruled by the extreme liberalism allowing such things as homosexual "weddings" and demonstrating a careless attitude to what once used to be the Church's Sacraments."

The Bishops' Council has defrocked Diomid, the Bishop of Chukotka, for insubordination to the Church hierarchy and attempts to set up a schism within the Church. The Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church has also suppressed the publication of several newspapers issued upon his blessing.

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