Russia's senior religious leader assailed homosexuality as a sin and an illness Tuesday and urged Europe to rediscover its Christian values.Speaking to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, a body that polices human rights in Europe, Patriarch Alexy II, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, made few concessions to West European sensibilities as he called for a return to Christian values.
Alexy's visit to Strasbourg came before a planned meeting Wednesday with French bishops and President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Though he has travelled before to countries that are predominantly Roman Catholic, this visit is his highest-profile trip to Western Europe and another step toward better relations with the Vatican, from which the Orthodox Church has been estranged for almost a thousand years.
In a recent newspaper interview, Alexy suggested that a meeting with the pope could take place within two years, though he has also emphasized that difficulties remain, in particular the activities of Catholic missionaries in Russia.
Alexy's speech to the assembly in Strasbourg echoed the Russian government's condemnation of acts of terrorism and its resistance to independence for Kosovo.
"There are many monuments that are sacred to the people of Serbia," the patriarch said of Kosovo, "and we cannot silently stand by when those monuments are being destroyed, despite the fact that they are under the protection of Unesco and were built in the 12th, 13th or 14th century."
But in a 50-minute appearance Alexy focused mainly on the need for Europe to rediscover its Christian values and abandon moral relativism, arguing that there was a "break between human rights and morality, and this break threatens the European civilization."
"We can see it in a new generation of rights that contradict morality, and in how human rights are used to justify immoral behavior," Alexy said. He has called for an alliance with the Roman Catholic Church on moral issues.
Alexy's comments on homosexuality provoked the most direct challenge to West European liberal thinking and the ideas of nondiscrimination pioneered by the Council of Europe, among other bodies.
Asked by the British Liberal Democrat council member David Russell-Johnston about the Orthodox Church's opposition to a planned gay pride march in Moscow, Alexy said that his religion told him to "love sinners despite their sins."
He added, however, that "no one should force me and my brothers and sisters in faith to keep quiet when we call something a sin when it is a sin according to the word of God."
Homosexuality is, he continued "an illness" and a "distortion of the human personality like kleptomania." The patriarch portrayed the gay rights parade in Moscow as advertising for immoral behavior and asked: "Why don't we have advertising for kleptomania?"
The comments drew applause from a number of council members from Orthodox countries including Russia, which is a member of the Council of Europe.
Russell-Johnston said later that the analogy drawn between homosexuality and kleptomania was "ridiculous."
The patriarch had, Russell-Johnston said, "repeated his aggressively intolerant position."
"What was regrettable was that a lot of people applauded him," Russell-Johnston said. This contradicted the position of the parliamentary assembly that "homosexuals and lesbians have human rights and their dignity should be respected."
In May 2006, violence against homosexuals prompted Terry Davis, secretary general of the Council of Europe, to urge the Russian authorities to prosecute those involved in the attacks which, he said, were "neither isolated nor spontaneous."
After the patriarch's appearance Tuesday, Davis, who held a 30-minute private meeting with Alexy, described the reference to kleptomania as an "unfortunate analogy."
He praised Russell-Johnston for raising the issue, but added that the patriarch was "entitled to his view as a religious leader." Gay rights were not discussed during their private meeting, Davis said.
Davis also highlighted other areas of Alexy's speech, including his criticism of the growing gap between rich and poor in Russia, and the growing materialism of Russian society.
Other senior figures in the council also emphasized the symbolism of the patriarch's appearance for the cause of intercultural dialogue.
René van der Linden, president of the Parliamentary Assembly, said that through his "strong public condemnation of xenophobia, extremism and ethnically motivated crimes," Alexy had demonstrated his "commitment to peace and mutual respect."
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