Top Russian patriarch assails homosexuality
Calls it both sin and an illness
By Stephen Castle, International Herald Tribune
October 3, 2007

STRASBOURG, France - Russia's senior religious leader assailed homosexuality as a sin and an illness yesterday and urged Europe to rediscover its Christian values.

Speaking to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, a body that polices human rights in Europe, Patriarch Alexy II, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, made few concessions to West European attitudes before a planned meeting today with French bishops and President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Though he has traveled before to countries that are predominantly Roman Catholic, this visit is his highest-profile trip to Western Europe and another step toward better relations with the Vatican, from which the Orthodox Church has been estranged for almost a thousand years. the rest