On March 2, 2024, His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia visited the World Youth Festival. At a meeting with the participants, the Primate of the Russian Church answered questions from the audience.
"The presence of immigrants due to economic needs should not pose a threat to the national identity of Russia and Russians," Patriarch Kirill emphasized in response to a question from one of the participants of the World Youth Festival, "Imagine this: people of another nationality have come to your country, there are many, very many of them, and they begin to displace everything Kyrgyz. After all, a person connected with his culture will say that this is not very good. Maybe the centripetal moods in the Soviet republics were once provoked by the fact that the religious life in these republics was not fully developed. Culture was present, but mainly, I would say, in folkloric terms. In no case should we suppress either religion or culture.
"But if we talk about the presence of immigrants, immigrants in Russia should always remember what country they came to. They should respect our customs. Russian people are peaceful, they don't gather in some groups that can attack immigrants, beat them up. There are some extremist phenomena, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the mindset of most people. So I am simply saying that the presence of immigrants in Russia, which is now due to economic problems, is possible under two conditions. Immigrants must have respect for the country and the people in whose environment they work. They should not form their own national ghettos that are aggressive to their surroundings.
All the things I am talking about are taking place. Of course, not globally, otherwise the state would sound the alarm. But I am well aware of how, for example, people are sometimes afraid of consolidated ethnic groups that may resort to violence against those they don't like. In other words, the presence of people of another culture, another language, another religion on the territory of Russia is acceptable, possible, but the indispensable condition must be respect for the Russian people, for Russian culture, that is, for the culture of the majority. Then everything will be fine, although it is not bad even now," the Patriarch emphasized.
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