The national universal Council of the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow ended with an appeal to the unity of the Orthodox world on 4 February. The Council was attended by 600 delegates, including personalities of the Russian Church and “brother observers” from other Orthodox Churches. At the end of the two-day meeting, the Council adopted a document with the title “Russia and the Orthodox World”, addressed at “all the nations of Orthodox tradition”. “We must join together says the document in giving a serious response to the challenge of secularisation, and to the attempts to build a monopolized world, founded on the supremacy of a single model of civilization”. The Council also made an appeal for the Churches to unite to “consolidate the efforts of the Orthodox world in the spiritual and cultural fields, in foreign policy and in the economy”. Some participants in the Council, however, rejected the proposal to turn Russia into the “centre of Orthodoxy”. The representative of the ecumenical Patriarchate, Christos Voulgaris, pointed out that the document does not reflect in this regard the point of view of Constantinople, while the Greek bishop of Kalavarita deplored some interventions that spoke of Moscow as “third Rome” or “new Jerusalem”.
