press service.<\/a><\/p>\nThe prime minister said it was \u201cnatural and human\u201d that after Russia\u2019s attack on Ukraine, supported by Moscow Patriarch Kirill, \u201cit is no longer possible for some Lithuanian Orthodox Christians to be part of the Moscow Patriarchate\u2019s Archdiocese of Vilnius and Lithuania without a conflict with their conscience\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s quite understandable and historically justified that in order to practice their faith without any conflict with their conscience representatives of national communities appealed to His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew to accept them into the mother Church of Constantinople,\u201d \u0160imonyt\u0117 said.<\/p>\n
While she said she backed the appeal, she also stressed that the final decision rested with the Patriarchate of Constantinople.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a matter for the Church and the faithful to decide,\u201d the prime minister said.<\/p>\n
She stressed, however, that the government \u201cwill do everything\u201d to ensure the freedom of belief, conscience and religion, enshrined in the Lithuanian constitution.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe state and its officials cannot interfere or try to influence the canonical decisions of Churches, but when they are made, it would be hypocritical to pretend that we don\u2019t understand their importance,\u201d the prime minister underlined.<\/p>\n
As reported earlier, Bartholomew for the first time arrived in Lithuania where he signed with Prime Minister \u0160imonyt\u0117 an agreement on bilateral cooperation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Prime Minister Ingrida \u0160imonyt\u0117 of Lithuania during a meeting with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew thanked him for the attention he pays to the Lithuanian Orthodox community and the issues concerning it. That\u2019s according to the Lithuanian government\u2019s press service. The prime minister said it was \u201cnatural and human\u201d that after Russia\u2019s attack on Ukraine, supported by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":154038,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"telegram_tosend":false,"telegram_tosend_message":"","telegram_tosend_target":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5142,5147],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-154059","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-world-en"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/df.news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/1474779-601220-756x425-1.jpg?fit=637%2C425&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154059"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154059\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":154060,"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154059\/revisions\/154060"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/df.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}