Sofia, May 15, 2018

A gay pride parade in Sofia. Photo: spzh.news

The Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church has expressed its attitude towards the upcoming LGBT parade in Sofia, calling on the members of the LGBT community to renounce their sins.

The parade is scheduled for June 9.

In its statement, posted on the Bulgarian Church’s official site, the Synod declares that its position towards sin remains unchanged.

Rather than engaging in pride parades, the hierarchs have called for piety and a renunciation of sin and its demonstrations.

“Taking into account free will, the Holy Orthodox Church again appeals to its children, brothers, and sisters, and lovingly reminds them that freedom is responsibility, and that the truly free man, if he so desires, can free himself from sin with God’s help in the bosom of the Holy Orthodox Church,” the Synod’s statement reads.

“Every human soul is more valuable than the entire world,” the Synod’s message concludes, “therefore, the Synod recalls that God does not desire the death of a sinner, but that the wicked turn from his way and live (Ezek. 33:11).”

The entire Orthodox Church, and the Bulgarian Orthodox Church has consistently stood against sexual deviancy manifested outside the bounds of the marriage between one man and one woman. In response to the 2016 LGBT parade, His Holiness Patriarch Neofit of Bulgaria wrote that, while showing “a pastor's care, responsibility, and love” for homosexual people, the Church is determined to oppose “attempts to show a sinful tendency as a norm in our society, as an occasion for pride and an example to follow.”

“Modern society, torn from its Christian roots, in its effort to be tolerant and humane, substitutes the understanding of core values like love and freedom and calls homosexuality by morally neutral expressions such as ‘sexual minority’ or ‘different sexual orientation,’” the patriarch wrote, “But to love a person, to appreciate and respect them, does not mean to be indifferent to what path they are treading: true or false, a path to salvation or destruction, to life or death.”

The Georgian Patriarchate recently announced that it will hold a procession in honor of family purity and mass weddings throughout Tbilisi on May 17, the day named “The Day of Family Holiness and Honor for Parents” by His Holiness Patriarch-Catholicos Ilia II, as a counter to the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia on the same day.

The Moldovan Orthodox Church also recently called upon the government to ban an LGBT march in the capital city of Chișinău.

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