News
“In our days of wars and displacement, AI, and an ever-declining agreement on values — on marriage and family, on formation and education, on good and evil — human rights offer themselves as an instrument for overcoming the global crisis of freedom,” said the Ecumenical Patriarch. “People know that freedom and peace do not come naturally as a result of economic development, rising living standards, and advances in science and technology.”
The Ecumenical Patriarch specifically addressed religion and the challenge of human rights.
“Much of the future of human rights depends on the attitude of religions towards them, and no solution can be found here without the dialogue of religions with human rights,” he said. “For Orthodox Christianity, being a person always means being with, being in community with other people.”
Orthodox anthropology resists individualism, the Ecumenical Patriarch noted. “The law of personhood is also an invaluable contribution of Orthodoxy to European identity,” he said. “Our emphasis on the social dimension of freedom does not exempt us from taking individual rights seriously.”
Orthodoxy is often accused of ethnocentric tendencies, noted the Ecumenical Patriarch. “We consider the idea of solidarity to be central to the encounter between Orthodoxy and human rights,” he said. “We cannot separate our Christian identity from our identity as modern people.”
The Ecumenical Patriarch concluded by noting that human rights will remain a major concern for humankind.
“There is no place today for triumphalism: alongside every advance in the protection of human rights, their disregard and abuse continue,” he concluded.
More on the address of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew at the Oxford Law School
