Russia approves Moleben for those who aborted children

(Mospat.ru) - At its December 27 meeting in Danilov Monastery, under the chairmanship of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill, the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church approved the text of a prayer service for forgiveness for the sin of abortion, reports life.ru.

The “Moleben of Repentance for Forgivenes for the Sin of Killing a Child in the Womb” has been sent to the Moscow Patriarchate’s publishing house for inclusion in prayer books. The new service is “very important,” in the words of Vladimir Legoida, the head of the Patriarchate’s Department for Relations Between Church and Society and the Media.

Abortion is unequivocally a sin in the eyes of the Orthodox Church. Although post-Soviet numbers have dropped considerably, Russia still has an alarmingly high number of abortions every year. Hierarchs, clergy, and activists routinely speak out against abortion and organize petitions and demonstrations against this terrible sin and its current legal status.

In November Patriarch Kirill proposed to remove the abortion procedure from the medical insurance system, noting that the Church is “of course against abortion.”