On 15 May 2012, Russia 1 TV channel will present Metropolitan Hilarion’s film “Unity of the Faithful.” Its release is timed to the fifth anniversary of the important historical event – the restoration of canonical communio9n between the Moscow Patriarchate and the Russian Orthodox Church outside of Russia. The Act of Canonical Communion signed on 17 May 2007 put a period in the history of the Russian Civil War and marked the end of the painful and dramatic estrangement that had lasted many decades.

The film gives the story of the way that the hierarchs of both Church went along towards this epoch-making event, of settling the differences and of blunting the contradictions, and of the exerted efforts. The film contains unique recollections and impressions of the participants in the negotiations, among them His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, Archbishop Mark of Berlin, Germany and Great Britain, archpriest Nikolai Balashov and Alexander Lebedeff, who served as secretaries of the commissions for restoration of canonical unity.

© http://www.mospat.ru/en/ - may 11th 2012