Make the people Orthodox

Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Rus' sets before the Church the task of leading Russians to real faith in God.

“To be honest, in the early 1990s we often baptized people who did not even know what was happening to them, and it is unknown how they perceived it all - perhaps as some kind of opposition to the overthrown government. And then what happened with many? They left the Church forever, they left,” the patriarch said after the liturgy in the Assumption Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin on Saturday, Interfax-Religion reports.

According to him, on the one hand, many of the older generation, unable to overcome the atheistic heritage, never came to God, on the other hand, “we are dealing with the onslaught of a new atheism - carnal atheism, coming simply from instinct, but gripping a person ".

As the patriarch emphasized, today the Church faces a “difficult task” when it is necessary to “translate the Orthodox faith from the folklore level, at which it often remains in the consciousness of our contemporaries, to the worldview level.”

“We will be able to call our people Orthodox when a significant part, if not the majority of people, motivate their actions with their religious beliefs - including in the professional field, in the political sphere,” he said.

The Patriarch noted that the Church does not express political ideas, it speaks “about the education of fundamental values ​​in the life of the people.”

“And if they are preserved, then Russia will always be alive, the spiritual strength of our people will always be preserved. And this is more important than any politics,” the patriarch concluded.