April 9, 2012
Interfax
The Head of the Synodal Department for Church Charities and Social Work Bishop Panteleimon of Smolensk and Vyazma said that attacks against the Church are getting the form of personal attacks against the Patriarch, "collecting gossips, slander."
"I believe it speaks against these people, who spread various filth, rather than against the Patriarch. Our people brought up in Soviet times entirely lost inner nobility, and became similar to Ham of the Bible," the Bishop said in his interview published by the Neskushny Sad Orthodox magazine.
He sees still another side in the campaign against the Patriarch.
"I believe that our Soviet history, when Bolsheviks seized power by force, made our people lose the correct attitude to any power - they lost respect for those who are above them. Modern people don't accept a respective attitude to any power. And I think it's Ham's sin too," Bishop Panteleimon said.
He reminded how much Patriarch Kirill did to revive church life.
"He more than others backs up the social work of the Church - if it was not his initiative, social activities of the Church won't develop so actively as they do. The things he does to revive church life have never been done before in Russia. And in response he gets threats and insults," the hierarch said.
According to him, the Patriarch has an "inhumanly tough schedule, he sleeps few hours, he always works though he is not a young man."
"He doesn't have any personal time at all - all his life is given to church work. To blow up a campaign of slander against him - is something mean that is most vividly expressed in the biblical personality of Ham," the bishop believes.
Read also:
One More Time About the Watch
Watching Patriarch Kirill Discredit Himself