Brussels, June 23, Interfax - The Moscow Patriarchate will make specific efforts to improve spiritual support of Russian nationals abroad.

In particular, the Department for External Church Relations decided to develop its data base on all parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church "to collect information on their needs, specific projects and initiatives focused on keeping the Russian Orthodox tradition," reads the release adopted following the results of the round-table discussion "Russian Orthodox Church and Russian Nationals in European Countries".

The discussion was held June 21-22 in Brussels upon the initiative of the Moscow Patriarchate and the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation.

For providing and improving support to Russian nationals within the canonic territory of the Russian Orthodox Church, it was deemed reasonable to "support the existing information resources of dioceses and parishes and develop new resources, encourage training of teachers of Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture and Orthodox catechesis, and develop training courses and teaching aids on this subject with a view of specific conditions of living abroad."

The participants also expressed their support to organizing pilgrimages for Russian nationals to the holy places within the canonic territory of the Moscow Patriarchate, cultural events of parishes, Russian language training courses, expanding Russian cultural centers in foreign countries and their cooperation with the Church.