In this episode, Fr. Fyodor Lukianov, head of the Pro-Family and Pro-Life Department of the Orthodox Church in Russia, talks about the pro-life movement in Russia and the challenges faced by pro-lifers.
00:00:00.000The most important thing was that we are not get any deal with evil.
00:00:06.360Hello, my dear friends. We are here in Moscow, Russia, and have the great opportunity to speak
00:00:11.980with Father Fyodor Lukianov. And he is the head of the sort of pro-life, pro-family
00:00:20.040department, if you will, of the Orthodox bishops in Russia. And so it's sort of equivalent to the
00:00:28.220head of the U.S. Conference of Bishops or Canadian Conference of Bishops pro-life arm. And we're
00:00:34.720really pleased to talk with Father about what's going on here in Russia in terms of life and family.
00:00:40.000Father, welcome to the program. God bless. Thank you, Father. Let's begin, as we always do,
00:00:44.180with the sign of the cross. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
00:00:51.440First of all, tell us a little bit about yourself and about what your position is here in Russia and
00:00:57.180in the Orthodox Church. I'm the head of the Patriarchal Commission for the Protection of the
00:01:02.660Family, Motherhood, and Childhood. I'm a priest of Jesus Christ, and I serve in the Church of the
00:01:10.740Annunciation of our Holy Mother. My predecessor was the first pro-lifer in Russia, Father Dmitry
00:01:17.920Smirnov, who founded the pro-life movement in 1992. And he was the first to raise the problems of
00:01:27.760unborn children, for protection of dignity of unborn children. And up to now, the Commission,
00:01:35.600by blessing of our Patriarch, is heading the pro-family and pro-life initiative, all Russia, and in
00:01:47.440Belorussia, and in all the places where the Russian Church acts. And we're responsible for the
00:01:56.080interference with the government on the issues concerning the protection of traditional and
00:02:04.400moral values. And that's what we do. And, of course, the security of our young generations,
00:02:13.480information security, and protection them from destructive subcultures is also the field of our
00:02:21.680activity. Beautiful. So tell us about Russia, because we've been hearing a lot of things.
00:02:26.420Russia had one of the highest abortion rates on Earth. Russia's abortion started in Russia, I believe,
00:02:32.360in 1920. What has come since 1992? Where are you at right now with regard to abortion? I know it
00:02:40.280started. Tell us about the numbers, if you can, during the Soviet times, and then now. How has it changed?
00:02:46.520Of course, it's a great problem for the whole world that the abortion came from a criminalized area to
00:02:56.480a kind of a legislation right, but we cannot recognize it as a right to kill other people.
00:03:05.260But unfortunately, the Soviet Union, the Soviet Russia, became the first country in the world
00:03:09.400which took the abortion from the criminal field and put it into legislative field.
00:03:15.200So, maybe we are the first to call the world to do it back. And, you know, in Soviet times,
00:03:24.720around 5 million abortions were made every year in the Soviet Union. 5 million people.
00:03:31.160Now, we're lacking people for being good scientists, for being painters, being the active society leaders,
00:03:45.200because all of them were left there in the abortion industry, you know. And that's a great disease for us. But since the time of the end of the Soviet Union, when the Orthodox Church was at least given the legal entity and possibility to act in political field, the situation became better.
00:04:08.720Up to now, the official rate is about half a million abortions per year. It's about 500,000.
00:04:18.200But we suppose it, though it becomes lower and lower from every year, we suppose there are a lot of hidden abortions.
00:04:26.880And since 1992, certain measures were taken by our patriarchs, by our bishops, and by our commission.
00:04:38.200It's really an achievement to my mind that up to this moment, millions of special calling papers calling to women to stop abortions was disseminating among all the medical environments of our Ministry of Health.
00:04:56.980And we are working with this ministry, and we have the results that in some regions now, due to the agreement of our church and the governors of these regions,
00:05:14.460some of the regions fully, almost fully banned abortions, like Volokhda and Crimea, especially the private industry,
00:05:23.920which is the most problematic, which is the most problematic, because, you know, the most criminal abortions are done there in the private industry.
00:05:33.460They took the voluntary decision to ban abortions and not to make it.
00:05:44.940And in these regions, we now see the growing of the birth rate.
00:05:50.380Crimea and Crimea and Volokhda and some of the regions of the central Russia, those who take these politics.
00:05:59.120And speaking about the total numbers, by this day, 700 clinics, private clinics in Russia, refused to make abortions due to our work with the local administrations by the blessing of our patriarch.
00:06:15.680And also medical abortions were banned and up to now were restricted highly, I would say, because there were very easy access to medical abortions in every clinic and every pharmaceutical shops and everywhere.
00:06:36.840And up to now they are being counted as drugs and very strictly and it's not possible to buy an American abortion easily in every shop.
00:06:49.680About 300,000. So the buying rate for abortions fell on one third in Russia after this measure was taken.
00:07:01.600But we met certain difficulties in making legislation changes.
00:07:06.600One of the success was the week of silence and the obligation of the week of silence is when a woman comes, she wants to make an abortion and the doctor should recommend her to wait for one week.
00:07:23.920Yeah, it is now is obligatory. And we also it's obligatory to to show the heartbeat of a small child for every mother who are trying to take this decision.
00:07:38.700But speaking about the federal law, it's ready now, the project is ready, and it's now being discussed in State Duma, we have a lot of obstacles and problems in just we are fighting for this law.
00:07:57.340And our patriarch is the first person who is, who prays that this law should be adopted by our parliament.
00:08:07.100So we are asking all the people of goodwill, all Christian brothers and sisters to pray for Russia, because now we have a real movement to this side of protection of children, unborn children, innocent children lives.
00:08:22.780Now, one of the things here in Russia, a lot depends on the president. And do you know where he stands on these things?
00:08:29.740Yes. And I want also to give some dose of hope to every Christian, you know, to we have a lot of power given from our heavenly father.
00:08:41.920And this power. And this power is our word, because the children of the king have the power.
00:08:49.640And if we use it, even those who have much money, administrative resource, they cannot resist you, as it was said to the apostles by Christ, by our Lord.
00:09:04.680And an example of this is the law forbidding to use the surrogacy for the foreign people who come to Russia, because we found that from the 2011, about 8000 children were sold, just simply sold, brought to homosexual families through a surrogacy system.
00:09:26.800And our patriarch said his word. We supported it as experts and as his assistants in Seydouma, and our president took the decision to ban this for Russia.
00:09:42.980Now, from the year 19, from the year 2022, it's banned. And thanks to God, it stopped.
00:09:54.000Like in many countries, it's criminal in many countries. I don't know why from 2011 it was legalized in here.
00:10:01.320But here, this is the real victory for all of us and save children.
00:10:06.600The most repeated phrase in scripture is, do not be afraid.
00:10:11.080We are called to speak the truth, to proclaim the gospel, and to live our lives without fear.
00:10:17.920For the past three years, we've brought this mission to the very heart of the church.
00:10:23.080At the Rome Life Forum, you won't just hear truth proclaimed.
00:10:27.160You'll have the chance to ask your questions directly to the speakers.
00:10:31.280This is your opportunity to engage, to challenge, and to go deeper into the battles we face today.
00:10:37.720Fear not. Her immaculate heart will triumph.
00:10:43.240A movement similar is coming to the United States now, too, that we're helping to push because it's a trafficking in human life.
00:12:06.040We know what happened to cities which were homosexual in the Holy Bible tells us about that.
00:12:13.360And for us not to be like these cities, we should fight with evil, with the means we are given from our Father.
00:12:21.360And in our country, a very significant document was adopted at 2021 by our Commission and by blessing of His Holiness, our Patriarch.
00:12:38.900We made a declaration for the protection of traditional family values and for necessity of protection on international level of these moral and spiritual values.
00:12:52.980This was not very famous, this document, but a year after a special presidential decree was issued.
00:13:05.300And the decree's name, you know, is for the protection of the moral and spiritual values of our people, traditional values.
00:13:13.180Now, up to now, this presidential decree is the base for all the political decisions in different fields of our legislation.
00:13:23.460And we see like our cultural sphere, our medical sphere and many other very social sphere are starting to change.
00:13:34.960For example, such important social area is the understanding of the family as the most secure place for children, the blood family, the family of their natural family.
00:13:51.080As you know, last year was the year of the family in Russia and the government took a lot of measures to protect the multi-children families, gave them a lot of preferences and financial support.
00:14:08.800And the status of these families started to change because in the early 90s, to be a multi-child family was to be a very poor family, marginal and put into some side of society and having many children meant a lot of problem, economical problem.
00:14:32.480But up to now, if you have a lot of children, it's a status, the status and our president every time says that the national idea of Russia is a multi-children family.
00:14:43.560It's a dream of every European country for a president to say like this, but in our country, it became true.
00:14:49.400And, you know, the church was like a moral constitution, the position of the church was like a moral constitution in the political decisions made in this field.
00:15:02.480The role of the church is the role of basic moral judgment in our society.
00:15:11.480And our politicians look with great hope at our church, at our patriarch, because it inspires them and encourages them to take these very serious decisions.
00:15:27.560And as LGBT, speaking about LGBT issues, of course, it ruined a lot of a lot of families, a lot of children's lives.
00:15:39.560And most of these people were deceived by the propaganda.
00:15:43.800So the first step was to ban the propaganda of LGBT and all connected with them.
00:15:49.800And as far as we saw, a lot of people who were just under the spell of this propaganda started to breathe freely, you know, and taking their own decisions about that.
00:16:05.800And we saw the falling of the quantity of those young men and girls who were the fans of this LGBT ideology.
00:16:17.800Now they are very, very low, I would say, these subcultures, I would say.
00:16:26.800But we still shouldn't be calm about that because it's still, there are still some things about international resources, because internet, you know, it's not national one.
00:16:36.800It's an international structure, and that's the problem. But up to now, the propaganda of LGBT has become, by the decision of the Supreme Court, the extremistic movement, because it is extremistic.
00:16:54.800And when they say that we are very poor and very weak and don't touch us, it's a way of life, look at the countries and some countries of Latin America.
00:17:05.800I would not call this country, but I saw this film where Christians took each other by hands to protect their church from being ruined by the LGBT activists.
00:17:23.800You know, that is the activity. When legislation stops to protect our nation, the Sodom comes, comes the last time of our nation, because it's a national suicide.
00:17:36.800LGBT is suicide because a lot of people who come into this culture, they are very, very upset.
00:17:43.800They are very, very depressive. Of course, we are very pitying them. We're praying for them to return to our father.
00:17:52.800But we see that they are not happy. That is the most secret. They are not happy because they are going against the human nature, which is given to us like to be the marriage union of a man and a woman.
00:18:06.800And up to now, and thanks to God, in Russia, this LGBT activity is totally stopped and declared to be extremistic.
00:18:16.800It's a very interesting thing because outside of Russia, very little is known because this is very recent. It's actually like you're saying this is in the 2020s already.
00:18:28.800So Russia has massively changed even since I was last year in 2014.
00:18:33.800So there's been a massive movement even in the last 12 years.
00:18:40.800That's stunning because the world, as we said, a lot of these movements started here.
00:18:49.800And the other countries, much of Europe, my country of Canada, we're still going in that direction.
00:18:58.800Yet here, it's started to turn around. And from the president himself, this is turning around.
00:19:07.800What do you think was it that made this difference, that stopped the descent and started the resurrection?
00:19:17.800What did that? Because we're looking for that in the West.
00:19:21.800Those who are pro-life, pro-family and pro-faith are saying, what do we have to do to get there?
00:19:28.800Do we have to all die? Because it's crazy.
00:19:30.800I remember the words of Vladimir Putin. He said, I suppose that Russia is governed by God directly.
00:19:40.800Otherwise, it's not understandable how it is still alive.
00:19:44.800The most important thing was that we are not getting any deal with evil.
00:19:52.800We tried to fight the Christian people.
00:19:54.800I would say this is the most worried of people of what is happening on.
00:19:59.800Because we are feeling when our country goes into some wrong direction.
00:20:05.800And praying and acting in our lives means a lot.
00:20:10.800Even if it seems that you cannot persist these trends and everything like this.
00:20:17.800You see, like with the example of the surrogacy in Russia.
00:20:21.800Everybody told us you are going against the industry, which is worth billions of dollars.