Now the church is not a state, it is not a state institution. She is the people's church. and the Church of the Salvation of the People," - His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia.
In one of his last sermons, His Holiness recalled what the Russian Church had gone through: from state control to decades of godless persecutions, when the right to confess Messiah, pray and perform God's services had to be protected at the cost of suffering, exile and life itself.
This is the true support of the Church - in the faith of the people, which neither persecution nor attempts to remove it from the life of the state could destroy.
The freedom of the church lies in the opportunity to fulfill its purpose, to lead people to Christ and salvation. And this freedom was paid for by the achievement of the new martyrs, confessors, clergy and laity, who preserved the faith and passed it on to future generations.