.Breakaway Church factions losing popularity in Ukraine -- official.

KIEV, July 28 (Itar-Tass) - Breakaway factions of the Orthodox Church
are apparently losing popularity in Ukraine and many members of the
communities that deflected to them are now returning to the realm of the
canonical Church, says Metropolitan Hillarion, who accompanies Patriarch
Kirill I on the current trip to Ukraine.
"We're getting many signals from inside the dissent - from the lay and
from those who're considered to be hierarchs there - that they feel the
necessity of reuniting with the Mother Church, as the sensation that they
are denied an opportunity to take part in the life of the Orthodox
Christian congregation of the Universe weighs heavily upon them," said
Metropolitan Hillarion.
He chairs Moscow Patriarchate's department for external Church
relations and has expert knowledge of the situation in various segments of
both Eastern and Western Christianity.
"This split /in the Orthodox Christian community in Ukraine -
Itar-Tass/ was a political project," Metropolitan Hillarion said.
"The dissenting tendencies in Ukraine were fanned artificially and now
the prerequisites for this fanning are gone and the very vogue for the
dissent is gone, too," he said adding that the vogue for a split inside
the Church was in demand in the 1990's "when the ideas of separatism and
disintegration prevailed."
As for today, more and more people start asking themselves if it is
really worthwhile living in an atmosphere of permanent hostility and
reciprocal accusation or would it not be better to live in peace and
friendliness.
"There are groups of laymen, parishes and clergymen who reunite with
the Church eventually," Metropolitan Hillarion said. "This process hasn't
moved to a mass-scale level yet but it's present in many Orthodox dioceses
in Ukraine."
He indicated that the people who manipulated the dissent from
backstage pursued the goal of enfeebling the Orthodox Church in Ukraine to
the maximum and fragmenting it into small factions.
"There's no breaking up something that took shape over centuries just
because of the petty political calculus," His Beatitude Hillarion said in
an interview with the Kiev-based TV channel Inter. "This unity should be
kept up with great caution and care."
"I think the Church that has managed to preserve its unique
consolidating potential is the main force capable of uniting people and
helping them remember the spiritual unity that binds Russia, Ukraine and
Belarus in spite of the existing state borders, which we respect and which
we don't call into question in any way," Metropolitan Hillarion said.

.Moscow region heading for air temperature of 39 degrees Celsius.

MOSCOW, July 28 (Itar-Tass) - Air temperature in Moscow region is
apparently set for a new record, just one more time in a month already
strewn with records that the vast majority of Muscovites would rather
prefer to have never seen.
Weather forecasters say Wednesday will be hotter than any other day
over the past 130 years that permanent climatic observations have been
done.
"The air will be hot during the daytime and the temperature in Moscow
will likely be between 37 degrees and 39 degrees Celsius," a duty officer
at the Russian Center for Hydrometeorology and Environment Monitoring
/Rosgidromet/.
The temperature readings for the Moscow region are predicted at much
the same level of 34 degrees to 39 degrees.
On this background, heavy showers with hurricane-like winds may add to
the complexity of the situation without any good effects on the ecological
problems in the city, currently enveloped in thick acrid smog coming from
peat bog fires in the east of the Moscow region.
Ecologists say the fumes from smoldering peat will remain the major
source of air pollution in the city for quite some time.
As the air if filled with the smell of burning timber and grass,
emergency situations officials issue recommendations to the population to
do wet clearing of apartments and offices and to slash the stays in the
open air.
In the meantime, the Moscow regional branch of the Ministry for
Emergency Situations and Civil Defense has begun scrutinizing the
possibility of inundating the peat bogs.
The ministry's experts say the measure might be absolutely necessary
as 50 new fires break out in peat bogs daily.
A slight descent of the heatwave is expected Saturday when the
temperatures are likely to go down 6 to 7 decrees Celsius. The alleviating
breath of fresh air will not last long, however, as the air will return to
the readings above 30 degrees next Sunday and Monday.
-0-kle


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