The Chairman of the Patriarchal Commission on Family, Protection of Motherhood and Childhood, Priest Theodore Lukyanov, took part in the session "The Image of the Father in multinational Culture and Media of Russia", organized as part of the XII International Forum of United Cultures. The Forum was held in St. Petersburg on September 24-26, 2026.
In his speech, Priest Theodore Lukyanov emphasized that the image of the father is fundamental to the formation of a person's personality. "God is a Person. We were created not by the universe, not by nature, but by God, the Father of the human race. And this Personality is imprinted on us. That's why we are individuals, because our Father is a Person," he said.
The priest paid special attention to the tradition of addressing by patronymic. "Ancient Rome—who didn't have a patronymic there? Slaves. A slave had no right to genealogy, a slave had no right to know his ancestors. And without a patronymic, there is no Fatherland, and there is no awareness of oneself as part of a larger whole," the priest emphasized, calling for the patronymic to be returned to official documents and the media space.
The head of the Patriarchal Commission explained the Orthodox understanding of primacy in the family, noting that the husband in the Orthodox understanding of marriage is not an autocratic tyrant, but one who embodies the moral law. "The head of the family of the small Church is the Lord God, who sets the laws. And the husband, like the prophet Moses, accepts and implements these laws. A tyrannical marriage is not an Orthodox marriage, but a pagan marriage. Orthodox marriage is when a husband is ready to lay down his life for his wife (John 15:13), and she accepts this ministry and therefore obeys (Ephesians 5:22-23)," he explained.
The priest also pointed out the danger of a "war of the sexes" and organizations that act not to unite, but to separate men and women. "God unites, but a completely different force separates. Family is unity. And any movement towards separation does not contribute either to the rebirth of the family or to the rebirth of our Fatherland," emphasized Priest Theodore Lukyanov.
In conclusion, the priest called for the promotion of the image of the father as a defender and peacemaker. "We don't ban, we protect. We need a law on algorithms that would display positive content about family, fatherhood and motherhood on worthy lines in the search engine," concluded the chairman of the Patriarchal Commission.
The session was also attended by Wang Bin, Director of the Eurasian Bureau of the Media Corporation of China, Anastasia Gorelkina, Vice President of the Association of Communication Agencies of Russia, Ali Jura, Chief correspondent of the Anadolu Agency, and Alexey Eremin, Deputy Plenipotentiary Representative of the President of the Russian Federation in the Central Federal District. The moderator was TASS CEO Andrey Kondrashov.