Former Protodeacon Andrei Kuraev, defrocked by a church court, found an excuse for why he failed to appear in court four times.
He wrote about this on his Facebook, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
It turns out that in December he stayed with the family of a priest, who was later diagnosed with coronavirus.
“If I went to court on December 22 or 29, I would bring a gift to my judges (who are older than me). I’m a deacon - I would go up to all the priests for a blessing, kiss their hands and beards... Maybe they would also shout at each other during a discussion in a closed room. And on December 31, the chairman of the court, Mikhail Ryazantsev, served with Patriarch Kirill, who came out of seclusion for the first time in several months...
My arrival would not have affected the verdict anyway. But a very likely infection in this case would give rise to the legend of the black magician Kuraev “the curse of the Egyptian pharaohs No.),” Kuraev wrote.
Previously, Kuraev claimed that he was tried for fighting the “homosexual lobby” in the Russian Orthodox Church, and then, when a Ukrainian journalist gave him a new idea, he connected the “persecution” of himself with his position on Ukraine and threatened to defect to the Patriarchate of Constantinople.
The Moscow diocesan church court found Kuraev guilty of insulting other priests and blaspheming the Church.
In 2014, Kuraev, who often published in liberal media, opposed the reunification of Crimea with Russia. He initiated several scandals related to the Russian Orthodox Church. In the fall of 2017, penance was imposed on him.