International theological conference in Moscow

Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia, top clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church and of the Local Churches will take part in the International Theological Conference - "The Orthodox Theory of the Church." The conference will meet in Moscow from November 17 to 20.

According to the foreign church relations department of the Moscow Patriarchate, the forum participants will consider ways of improving church management in the new historical conditions, the status and the codification of the church law, and relations between the Local Churches. Apart from that, the conference participants will try to find "a harmonious balance between the local and universal levels of the church existence, between the ethnic-national and global matters," said the foreign church relations department.

This conference will be the fourth after the tradition of holding all-church theological conferences of the Russian Orthodox Church was resumed in 2000. The previous forums were devoted to theology on the threshold of the third millennium, the Holy Trinity, and the orthodox theory on man.

The peculiarity of these conferences, the foreign church relations department underscored, is that their results are studied and approved at sessions of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Apart from the church top clergy, the forum will be attended by well-known Russian and foreign scientists, historians, philosophers and representatives of secular science. Scientists from Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Georgia, the United States, France, Great Britain, Germany, Austria and Italy will arrive to attend the conference.