4/7/2006 To the World Summit of Religious Leaders Most Holy Alexie, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russias, In this historic see of the Most Holy Orthodox Russian Church, we would like to express to your Beatitude our sincere, cordial and brotherly feelings as well as those of the entire Church of Greece. We would also like to congratulate you most wholeheartedly upon the organisation of this significant interreligious meeting. The aforementioned meeting coincides with the summit of the leaders of the most powerful states of the world, who meet in order to address the numerous, serious and thorny problems of the planet. We, the religious leaders, must, for our part, offer hope to mankind and contribute to reconciliation and peace worldwide. At the same time, we bear the historic responsibilities of furthering the propagation of religious freedom and human rights in all countries, of increasing our efforts to limit inequalities among peoples, to curb social injustice and to abolish man’s exploitation by his fellow man, and of teaching everyone in practice respect for and toleration of the faith, the ideology and the views of others. From this heart of the Most Holy Orthodox Church of Russia, I recall how during the 20th century your country suffered from violence, authoritarianism, persecution, torture, unjust incarcerations, exile, forced internal migration and unjust death sentences imposed upon millions of her faithful children. You should be proud in Christ, Your Holiness, for being the descendants of such a great and old cloud of Holy Martyrs of Faith, Martyrs who continued the tradition of the martyrs of the first Christian centuries. More broadly, the reality is that tyrannical régimes, which, in the 20th century, claimed millions of innocent victims, espoused the ideology of atheism, according to which man has no value, and also a blind racial and/or nationalist fanaticism, at the expense of innocent and powerless people, whether Jews or Christians in their religion. In the same century, the interests of the powerful of the Earth and political and national considerations caused genocides, such as those of Armenians and Greeks, inhabitants of the coasts of the Black Sea, as well as violent deportations of populations. Besides, we must admit that, even before the 20th century, it was mainly in Europe or by Europe that thousands of people fell victims to religious wars, religious persecution and violent conquest or proselytism. At the beginning of the 21st century, we witnessed sad and inhuman terrorist acts in the name of religion, which came to be added to the long line of similar acts in the name of political, ideological or ideological principles. However, as has been stressed on many occasions, the use of violence in the name of religion constitutes an act against religion. The use of violence in response to injustice leads to the failure of all efforts peacefully to settle disagreements or conflicts or to restore justice. I am convinced that we all condemn violence against the human person, that we condemn the prevalence of fear in the society in which we live. This fear comes from the lack of love, because, as our Lord Jesus Christ said, “love expels dread” before God and, as a result, before His image, Man. If we are to address injustice in this world, we must first agree that we shall exclude violence, terrorism, murder of innocent citizens and seek for peaceful ways, not in theory but in practice, in which to contribute to the creation of an environment of “peace upon earth and good will in men”. Most Holy Alexie, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russias, In order to succeed, as religious leaders, in contributing to peace and to the progress of mankind, we must be the first to carry out our self-criticism, to repent of our own and our predecessors’ errors, and to decide that never again shall we let religion be used as a weapon for political, national or racial conflict. We are the ones, who must reinforce the overwhelming majority of law-abiding, moderate and peace-loving citizens, who must protect the weak from the arbitrariness of the powerful and who must isolate the very small fundamentalist minorities that bring religions into disrepute. We must disprove Huntington’s theory of the clash of religions and civilisations in practice, and not allow our mistakes to provide the atheistic and totalitarian ideologies of the New Age with an opportunity to attack religions. We must all jointly face these attacks, as well as the challenges of globalisation and, above all, those set by the religious and cultural syncretistic melting-pot, in a peaceful, spiritual but also decisive and firm manner. Most Holy Alexie, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russias, Our meeting in Moscow gives us the opportunity to send a message of hope to the whole world, and to put forward our proposals for peace and the development of mankind. My lowliness proposes that the message of our conference also contain the following points: 1. The leaders of the eight most powerful states of the world must show in practice that they think of the weak of the Earth, and that they desire the establishment of world peace through freedom and justice and not through the law of the strongest, which exacerbates passions and hatred and perpetuates violence. 2. Political and religious leaders, we commit ourselves to fighting against poverty, unemployment, mental alienation, modern forms of slave-trade and discrimination against citizens on political, ideological, economic or religious grounds. 3. We all jointly uphold the protection of life, and particularly of the life of human beings which do not have the possibility of protest or defence, such as embrya from the moment of their conception, the elderly and our ailing fellow-men. 4. We jointly propose the abolition of death penalty even in the countries in which it has not been abolished yet, as well as the abolition of all forms of torture. 5. We must see to the preservation of family as the healthy nucleus of society and reject individualism and self-interestedness as motives for social recognition. 6. We must teach love and respect for the environment and refraining from the domination over it, which eventually degrades our own lives. Most Holy Primate of the Patriarchate of Moscow and All Russias, May we once again congratulate Your Holiness upon this initiative of convoking a World Summit of Religious Leaders and pray that the Lord may grant good health upon Your Holiness, so that You may continue offering Your invaluable ministration to the Orthodox Church and, through It, to the whole of mankind. Amen. The Archbishop of Athens and All Greece, Christodoulos [Transl. into English by Dr N. C. Petropoulos, M.St., D.Phil. {Oxon.}]