the Majority of Russian bishops and priests took part in the vote on the question of amending the Constitution of the Russian Federation, the head of the Synodal Department for external Church relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, Metropolitan Hilarion, the TV channel “Russia 24” on Saturday, July 4. However, he noted that especially the data on the attendance of clergy was not going to.
Commenting on the high result (for the renewal of the Constitution in favor of more than 78 percent of voters), Metropolitan Hilarion noted that the amendments were published in a timely manner, so people can study them, and that they were diverse and everyone found something important for him.
So, according to him, for the believers of particular significance is the fact that the Constitution now mentions faith in God. In addition, the relevant paragraph of the Constitution now brings all the traditional confessions of the country.
the Priest recalled that, when a constitutional amendment was developed under the chairmanship of his Holiness Patriarch Kirill gathered the Interreligious Council of Russia, which includes representatives of Orthodoxy, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism, and inter-Christian consultative Committee, which includes representatives of Christian confessions of the Russian Federation. And this joint meeting was made about this amendment and about the need to make a constitutional point about marriage as a Union between a man and a woman.
“Now if even only two of those amendments were still all believers of our country voted for them would be,” —said Metropolitan Hilarion.
On July 4, according to the decree of the President of Russia Vladimir Putin, the amendments to the Constitution take effect.