Patriarch Focuses on Fight against Traditional Values and Demography in His Epistle
By Gvantsa Gabekhadze
Wednesday, April 11
The Georgian Patriarch Ilia II, who is the society’s most trusted figure in Georgia based on almost all polls, stated in his Easter Epistle that the ongoing fight against traditional values and church is very obvious.
“The tendency of degrading traditional values, reduction of patriotic spirit, and disappearance of national identity is seen everywhere. There is a big attempt to declare some of the grave sins as natural state of humans..
“Deliberately or unintentionally, aggression and immorality, drug addiction and gambling are frequently promoted by the media as well; use of offensive language, lies, cynicism, public insulting … have become common”, the Patriarch’s Epistle reads.
Ilia II also focused on demographic problems facing the country and talked about the importance to assist families with many children.
“As experts say, in a short period of time, the population is expected to be decreased by 28%, which will have grave consequences for our small nation.
“In order to improve this alarming situation, we believe that it is necessary to create a negative attitude towards abortion which is a grave sin and at the first stage to develop a separate law for the part of families with many children in order to take effective steps to assist them,” Ilia II stated.
The Patriarch said that the state leadership should create special conditions for both Georgian and other ethnic minority families, with four or more children, and provide significant material assistance to them.
Patriarch stressed on the importance of cooperation between the church and the government in the process of building the state.
“In fact, we all want to have a strong, developed country. The only way to achieve this is to have society with system of correct values and it will solve political, economic and social problems. Disoriented society will fall into chaos and the state will affected,” Ilia II said.
