Cleric to U.N.:Rights need moral base

Senior Russian Orthodox leader Metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk and Kaliningrad told a forum at the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva Tuesday that human rights must involve religious-based morality. The individual must have a right to be safe from the propagation of violence, use of drugs and alcohol, gambling and sexual laxity, he said.

At the same time, human rights advocacy is used to undermine Christian and religious values and ethics. "In many countries, freedom is used as a pretext for developing a commercial industry filling society with propaganda of amoral way of life," said Kirill, referring to support for violence, drugs and alcohol, gambling and sexual permissiveness, Ecumenical News International reported Wednesday.

"It is clear to Orthodox Christians that human dignity is inconceivable without a religious-spiritual and ethical dimension," asserted Kirill. Religious views had been deemed "a private affair" and "denied validity as a source of modern law, including human rights law" despite the fact that almost 80 percent of the world's population have been found to be "religious people," the Russian prelate added.

"As a result, the agnostic and even materialistic attitude to life tends to become dominant to draw religious rites, symbols and ideas away from the public sphere," he said.