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Metropolitan of Cheboksary and Chuvash Savvaty removed from service and forbade the rector of the Church of Blessed Xenia of Petersburg in Novocheboksarsk, Roman Stepanov, to hold services, reported on the website of the Metropolitanate.
“You chose the salvific path of repentance to strive for public popularity, exchanging the priceless Tao of the priesthood for vanity and pride that overpowered all other weaknesses,” the metropolitan’s address says.
Stepanov was deprived of the right to wear a cassock and a pectoral cross, and his case will be considered by a church court no later than December. As a reason for the ban on serving in the metropolitanate named divorce from a wife and cohabitation with another woman, drug use and “using the position of a priest for personal gain.”
In the Cheboksary-Chuvash diocese “Rise” statedthat the decision was made on September 2 due to the fact that Stepanov hid the divorce and the illegitimate daughter. In addition, parishioners allegedly complained about him. “He had problems. He already realized that he was in fact banned. <...> His way of life is incompatible with the priesthood, “the diocese noted.
Previously Stepanov on his YouTube channel Pope Roman appealed to the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill and other representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church with a call to report on their income and declare property. “I invite all of us to repent, to make our lives open,” the priest said. According to him, such a step will bring the dialogue between the Russian Orthodox Church and society to a new level and will allow the Church, which has been accused of corruption more than once, to regain people’s trust. It is time for the ROC to stop being an organization where lawlessness and abuse of spiritual authority in order to obtain material benefits are hushed up, he is sure.
Stepanov’s appeal accompanied the hashget “Fund for the fight against church corruption” (probably, we are talking about a reference to the Anti-Corruption Fund – FBK – Alexei Navalny). Everyone who has not sinned will agree to disclose data on their income, Stepanov expressed confidence. In a conversation in “Idel.Realii” the priest stressedthat he did not oppose Patriarch Kirill, and believes that his initiative to submit the declarations should be supported so that “people trust”.
In the Cheboksary diocese to journalists statedthat Stepanov’s dismissal from service is not related to this “manifesto.” “It has nothing to do with his speech [в адрес патриарха]… Priests are not required to report income, it is like a trade secret. A priest cannot lie, ”they indicated there. The diocese is confident that Stepanov made a special statement on the declaration of the patriarch in order to increase the number of subscribers in the channel and monetize them.
Patriarch Kirill during his tenure got at the center of several scandals involving expensive items or real estate. So, in 2012, a photograph appeared on the Web, which shows that the patriarch is wearing a Breguet luxury watch worth more than $ 30 thousand. The media drew attention to the fact that this clock was retouched on the website of the Moscow Patriarchate. The press service of the Russian Orthodox Church subsequently apologized for the “ridiculous mistake” of the photo editor during the processing of the 2009 photo archive. Patriarch Kirill himself called photo with clock collage.
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