Transcript of the beginning of the meeting:
Vladimir Putin: Your Holiness, allow me to congratulate you once again on the anniversary of your enthronement. These three years have flown by. You are very busy, constantly touring the country and making foreign trips. I would like to thank you for your enormous contribution to strengthening the spiritual foundation of our society and relations with other churches. This is one of the major elements of our foreign policy, particularly our relations with our close neighbours in the so-called post-Soviet space. It is very important for people who live there to feel an inseparable link with the Russian Orthodox Church and, hence, with Russia, to feel themselves a part of our common Christian and Orthodox community. I congratulate you once again and wish you the best.
Patriarch Kirill: I would like to thank you cordially for your words, for your congratulations, and for your contribution to the development of relations between the church and the state. We should be proud as a nation of the marvel we have witnessed in the last 20 years, and especially in the last 10 to 12 years.
What happened in this country has never happened anywhere else in history. The religious life of an enormous nation lay in ruins, discriminated against because of faith, but it has since flourished and not only at the level of thought or personal religious experience, which are important but not very visible, but also in terms of the restoration of churches, monasteries, the formation of the church charity system as well as educational youth programmes. In other words, the spiritual potential that the people had but that was severely suppressed by ideology has spilled over.
This could not have happened in a country that did not guarantee these freedoms. In the last few years the Russian church and other traditional religions – I can speak on their behalf – have acquired what was difficult even to imagine them acquiring in such a short span of time.
You are the prime minister but also a presidential candidate. I would like to talk with you about the future and I’m not the only one – representatives of our other traditional religions have asked me to initiate a meeting with you, a conversation for all of us. It is perfectly obvious that given current achievements, the government should pay some attention to religious organisations and the life of the people and, probably, should adjust its course.
Since the current level of religious ties between the Church and the state is so high and the atmosphere is so friendly and open, I would like to start a dialogue with representatives of Russia’s traditional religions. I would like to invite you to the Christ the Saviour Cathedral when you have the time to sit and talk openly about the future and current events in our society and our homeland.
Vladimir Putin: Thank you for this suggestion. It is very constructive. I would be pleased to meet with the leaders of our traditional religions and other faiths present in this country. But, of course, we should start with the leaders of traditional religions.
Indeed, much has been done to restore religious organisations and help them develop in the last 10 years, and even earlier, starting from the early 1990s. But years before this upsurge of our traditional religions, the state had inflicted such powerful damage on their organisations that it is probably – definitely, in fact – still indebted to the Church and our traditional religions. Indeed, many datsans and synagogues, Orthodox churches and mosques have been built. I think more mosques have been built recently than during all of Russian history. But let me repeat that the state is still in debt, even if we look at the material aspect of the matter. You know how many churches and other religious institutions we are turning over to traditional religions, and this is just a fraction of what the state should return.
Patriarch Kirill: All this is true. And what existed...
Vladimir Putin: And what existed before. There are things that cannot be returned.
Patriarch Kirill: This is impossible.
Vladimir Putin: Because this will have other consequences and they will often be negative for society. You know this discussion with our art figures and museum workers. I am very grateful to you – to you and the leaders of other religions – for your tolerant and calm attitude to this and for conducting a professional dialogue with the museum workers and others in other spheres because we must strive to improve things rather than create more problems. But there is one thing…
Patriarch Kirill: May I interrupt you? All the problems were at the discussion stage. These people that formulated the issues had nothing to do with religion or art. But when the law was adopted we started cooperation, and I would like to report to you that now we do not have any conflicts. In fact, we could not have had them by definition because people involved in this dialogue on both sides are fully responsible. They care about the preservation of cultural values, the benefit of our homeland and a calm atmosphere in our society.
Vladimir Putin: All this has been achieved because the law has proved to be well-balanced and coordinated with all participants in the dialogue and because law-enforcement practices have been correct.
Patriarch Kirill: Absolutely true.
Vladimir Putin: And it has shown that all people involved in this process want our people and our country to benefit.
Patriarch Kirill: Absolutely.
Vladimir Putin: I’d like to reassure you that our government will continue paying a great deal of attention to this. We will continue to steadily and consistently pay off our debts and create new opportunities for our traditional religions.
Patriarch Kirill: Thank you.
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Earlier today Prime Minister Vladimir Putin sent a message of greetings to Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and Russia on the anniversary of the Enthronement Day.
The message reads, in part:
“These years have seen the continued consolidation of the prestige of the Moscow Patriarchate and the Russian Orthodox clergy – both in this country and far beyond. Under your leadership the Russian Orthodox Church has substantially expanded the reach of its social service and made considerable progress towards restoring its traditional role in society. Cooperation between the state and the Church has reached an entirely new level and credit for this largely goes to you. I am pleased to note the adoption of the right decision on the return of religious property to the Russian Orthodox Church. This is another landmark on the road towards achieving historical justice in respect to the Church.”