Story By: Gheorghi Caraseni, Sub Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Central European News
The COVID-denying Russian priest who stormed a women’s monastery and set up a perimeter of Cossack fighters has now told Vladimir Putin to hand him power over the country or suffer a “full-scale spiritual war”.
Prominent Russian Orthodox priest Father Sergei Romanov, who was banned from preaching in public after refusing to follow COVID-19 guidelines in April, made the bizarre statements in a YouTube video.
He said: “I suggest you, President of Russia Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, to transfer the authority at international level to me, Father Sergei.”
He added that in return: “In three days, I will restore order in Russia.
“There are spiritual forces in Russia that you did not even suspect. We have forces both in the army, and in the navy, and in all structures, and in the peoples of multinational Russia.”
The priest promised to start a “full-scale spiritual war” if his demands were not met, and asked for Patriarch Kirill, 73, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, to join Putin in negotiations about exchanging power.
He said Putin and the church leader were hidden enemies of Russia, who had led the country to “open rebellion, the closure of churches, hatred,” and had “put their flesh above eternal life”.
He added: “Otherwise, I personally declare to you, the apostate Patriarch Gundyayev (Kirill’s secular surname), a preliminary full-scale spiritual war. Be careful: there will be no blood, no revolutions. You gained power for free. As it was freely received, you will give it back freely.”
He warned that Putin’s “days were numbered” if he did not resign, saying that tens of thousands of pensioners had gone to him for confession and their pension is several times lower than “countries where there is not as much wealth as in Russia”.
Romanov recently made international headlines when he took the Sredneuralsk women’s monastery in central Russia’s Sverdlovsk Oblast by force, forcing the mother superior out and setting up Cossack fighters to guard the site.
The priest faces an ecclesiastical court for continuing to preach in public despite being banned, as well as a secular court for inciting hatred after he claimed the church authorities were closing churches because of a “pseudo-pandemic”.
It is unclear if religious or state authorities plan to take the monastery back from the priest.
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