The priest who last month delivered a eulogy for President Putin’s opposition candidate Alexei Navalny will be banned from leading religious services for three years. The spiritual leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, Kirill, decided this in a decree. That decree was recently published on the Moscow Patriarchate’s website.
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The priest in question, Dimitri Safronov, is also no longer allowed to “wear the cassock and the cross”. This can be read in the decree, which was signed by Patriarch Kirill on April 15.
A reason for the sanction was not given in the decree. “We clearly understand why,” Navalny’s team wrote in a statement on ‘Telegram’. Safranov, who led services in a church in the center of the Russian capital, Moscow, will now have to perform his function as a sexton (kind of handyman, ed.) elsewhere in the city.
According to Navalny’s supporters, Safronov delivered the eulogy on March 26, 40 days after the opposition leader’s death, in accordance with Orthodox tradition. The service took place in the presence of Navalny’s family and supporters, at Moscow’s Borisovo cemetery, where the Kremlin critic is buried.
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