Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad, the Russian Orthodox Church's primary authority on interchurch and interfaith relations, told the 10th gathering of the World Council of Russian People in Moscow on April 4 that Russia needs a religion-based morality and he criticized the moral relativism of the West, a "moral autonomy" that often distorts the real issues of human rights.Kirill gave as examples abortion, homosexuality, euthanasia, and "the mocking of the sacred." Such evils the Russian Church cannot accept though Western journalists, politicians and others seek to portray them as human rights. "We should not shed any tears about rising xenophobia at a time when we open opportunities for a person, who is not restrained by any moral forces, to ravage sacred places, spit on his fatherland, and destroy his culture. Such a person will go and kill someone else on the basis of race or faith. There is one single and indivisible morality."
Patriarch Aleksy II emphasized the same point in his address: "To what extent does this [Western] vision of human rights allow an Orthodox people to live in accordance with the faith it professes?"
