Archpriest Chaplin opposed the "hour of the Earth": "This is a hypocrisy"

The head of the Synodal Department for the relationship between the Church and Society, Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin criticized the annual international environmental action of the World Wildlife Fund "Hour of the Earth" , aimed at attracting attention to the problem of climate change, Interfax reports.

“At 20:30 I will be in the subway, where, thank God, I can’t turn off anything. But I will turn off the light in my cell, however, an hour later, and not least because I see an element of hypocrisy in today's global action,” Vsevolod Chaplin said on Saturday.

Recall that the action will be held on Saturday of 7 thousand cities of different countries, whose inhabitants will turn off the light at 20:30 local time for an hour. At the same time, lights on buildings that are symbols of some states will go out.

According to the priest, on the one hand, on the one hand, it is always good to attract the attention of people to the problems of the environment, but on the other, it is worth considering, “are we ready to seriously reconsider our lifestyle so as not to force the surrounding nature, are we ready to spend hundreds of liters of water every day on our beloved body and on what it is dressed, are we ready to sacrifice at least half the percent of our income for recovery for recovery Nature ".

“It will simply be done to people who are not rich, but the rich will probably oppose, justifying themselves by spending funds - of course, smaller ones - on the simulation of environmental activity,” said Vsevolod Chaplin.

"Gentlemen, effective managers, you know better than me that today the virtual office is more effective than the real one. Are you ready to refuse to come to the office not every day, but a little less, especially if the whole meaning of their presence in the office is always called at hand?" - the representative of the Russian Orthodox Church asked a question.

In addition, according to him, a huge number of air travel, city travel and other "environmentally non -useful things" occurs only for the sake of "so that people amusing their pride, receive superpituals and generally do rather meaningless things."

"Is it not worth partially partially abandoning all this, so that the world around us, created by God, has become a little cleaner and harmonious, and our souls would be a little less exhausted by vanity?" - said the priest.

It should be noted that only two years ago Chaplin himself justified the "luxury and pretense of wealth" of the Russian Orthodox Church by "reflecting the public prestige of the Church."

“People want the temples of God, and the vestments of the clergy, and the elements associated with the public prestige of the clergy would be as visible as possible and reflect the place of the church in the life of society that any believer considers central,” he said then.