The Russian Orthodox Church cannot accept a “sex change” under any circumstances, and the corresponding operations are included in the “industry of deception” in which psychologists, surgeons and other specialists are involved. Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, the head of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations, told this RIA Novosti commenting on the decision to prepare a special church document on this topic.
“The position of the Russian Orthodox Church on the so-called “sex change” is expressed in the “Fundamentals of the Social Concept.” This position is not subject to revision. The Church cannot accept a “sex change” under any circumstances,” Metropolitan Hilarion said.
According to him, “it is obvious that no sex change actually takes place,” and “a mutilation operation can only change some of the secondary sexual characteristics of a person, but she cannot turn a woman into a full-fledged man or a man into a full-fledged woman.”
“The sex reassignment industry is an industry of deception, in which psychologists, psychiatrists, sexologists, endocrinologists, plastic surgeons participate,” the hierarch of the Russian Church is sure.