Catholicos Patriarch of All Georgia, His Holiness and Beatitude Ilia II released traditional Easter Epistle on the occasion of Easter. It was read to believers at the Sameba (Holy Trinity) Cathedral in Tbilisi.

Patriarch focused on the several issues. He said that the alienation from God has been manifested differently in different epochs and spaces and in our time, it took especially grave form.

“The tendency of degradation of the traditional values, reduction of the patriotic spirit, and disappearance of national identity can be seen everywhere. There is a big attempt to declare some of the serious sins as the natural state of human. Deliberately or unintentionally, aggression and immorality, drug addiction and gambling are frequently promoted through media as well;  use of offensive language, lies, cynicism, public insulting … became a common occurrence”, – the Patriarch’s Epistle reads.

Ilia II focused on demographic problems facing the country and talked about the importance to assist families with many children.

“As the experts say, in a short period of time the population is expected to be decreased by 28%, which will have grave consequences for our small nation.

In order to improve this alarming situation, we believe that it is necessary to create a negative attitude towards abortion which is a grave sin and at the first stage to develop a separate law for the part of families with many children in order to take effective steps for assisting them.

Country should create special conditions for both Georgians and other ethnic origin families who have four and more children and provide significant material assistance to them”, – Patriarch said in his Epistle.

Patriarch underlined the importance of cooperation between the church and state in the process of building of the state.

“In fact, we all want to have a strong, developed country. The only way to achieve this is to have society with system of correct values and it will solve political, economic and social problems. Disoriented society will fall into the chaos and the state will be greatly hurt.

We believe that the church and state should be separated from each other, but it is necessary to cooperate in the process of building the country”, – the epistle reads.