Do not cry for sin

Monks should not use the Internet to protect themselves from temptations. According to Interfax, the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' Kirill stated this during a meeting with the brotherhood of the monastery on the Holy Mount Athos.

"Now the Internet is a great temptation. Many monks are, in my opinion, is completely unreasonable: on the one hand, they leave the world to create favorable conditions for salvation, and on the other hand, they take their mobile phone and begin to enter the Internet, where, we know, a lot of sinful and seductive," said Patriarch Kirill.

"When the monk picks up a mobile phone to enter the Internet, should he think about it, is he worth it in the monastery at all?" - asked the Patriarch.

The head of the Russian Orthodox Church is not the first to make statements about the "sinfulness" of the Internet. So at the end of 2011, at the Moscow Diocesan Assembly, he stated that confidence in the information posted on social networks, "coupled by the loss of basic values" makes Russians especially vulnerable to manipulating their consciousness. "

Last year, the Patriarch urged priests not to strive for “imaginary popularity” on social networks. "God forbid to us, the church people, is seduced by the opinion of us in blogs or even in the media. Because, having done so once, we fall into a trap and begin to do everything in order to maintain a prevailing rating. And how easy it is to cross the fatal line and forget about our pastoral responsibility! Therefore, for us the leading principle is not positive or negative reviews about us, not the number of no quantity about us. “Likes” in certain Internet posts, and what God reveals to us in prayer and in spiritual experience, ”said the head of the Russian Orthodox Church.

At the same time, thanks to the vigilance of Internet users, the Patriarch was several times in the center of loud scandals. So in May 2011, readers of the publication "Photo -Roads of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church" drew attention to the fact that the photo of the meeting of the head of the Russian Orthodox Church with the inhabitants of Kharkov was retouched - the number of people in the square with the help of a graphic editor was doubled.

In April last year, a photograph was discovered on the official website of the Russian Orthodox Church, where there was no watch on the patriarch’s hand, but they were reflected on a varnished table. “This is the campaign against the Patriarch,” the oppositionist Alexei Navalny wrote then in his blog. An hour later, the photograph on the site was unavailable. The patriarch’s chopped clock was produced by Breguet. Their cost is estimated at about 30 thousand dollars.