By Kostas Onisenko
“The stance of the Church on this issue was not discussed at the meeting of the Holy Synod, but our common stance is that no discrimination should be made against citizens based on the presence or absence of coronavirus vaccination,” said the head of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, Metropolitan Hilarion, on the TV channel Russia-24.
According to Metropolitan Hilarion, each person should make his own decisions on this issue, as states and airlines may impose restrictions on the movement of people, depending on whether they have a so-called “covid passport” or not.
At the same time, the Metropolitan estimated that the problem may be more acute for Russian citizens who will have been vaccinated with the Russian vaccine, as it is not known whether Western countries will recognize this vaccine and will not require travelers to be vaccinated with one of the “west” certified vaccines.
“If such thing happens, it will indeed create very serious problems in the movement of our citizens to western countries”, the Metropolitan estimated.