School insulted the feelings of believers, says Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin

The chairman of the department of the Moscow Patriarchate on the relationship between the Church and Society (Sheep), Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, believes that journalist Ksenia Sobchak offended the feelings of believers, wearing priestly vestments.

“I think it would be nice to verify this publication not only on the subject of insulting the feelings of believers, but also on the subject of insulting the objects they count, which, as you know, is persecuted by the law,” the priest told the Interfax -religion portal.

As already reported , on April 30, Ksenia Sobchak published a photograph on her Instagram , where she is captured in church vestments and with an overhead beard. On the same day, a lawyer from the Kirov region, Yaroslav Mikhailov, filed a complaint with the Investigative Committee with a demand to institute criminal proceedings against Sobchak under part 1 of Article 148 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (public actions expressing a clear disrespect for society and committed in order to insult the religious feelings of believers). It provides for a penalty of up to 300 thousand rubles or imprisonment for up to one year.

After exactly a month, on May 30, Mikhailov posted on Facebook a letter received from the Main Investigative Directorate of the SK on the beginning of the audit. It is dated May 12th. "I ask you to organize an audit of the stated arguments and notify the author of the results," the department said in the response.

Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, continuing to comment on the act of Sobchak, emphasized that for a believer, "the use of liturgical vestment, which can only be worn by a ordained priest and only during a worship, looks like a desecration of a shrine."

He said that he gave an interview to Sobchak and journalist Anton Krasovsky for the magazine "Snob", in connection with which a scandalous photograph was taken. At the same time, according to the agency’s interlocutor, Sobchak planned to interview with representatives of other religions, including with a Muslim.

"I wonder if Ksenia Sobchak was photographed in Chalm?" - Father Vsevolod asked a question.

He recalled that "our new martyrs laid life for not anything unclean to touch the sacred, and those shrines that a layman should not touch were defended by believers even to death."

“When the Bolsheviks called on the church to give their values, everything that did not have liturgical use was given and what the layman could touch, and for the inviolable shrines people went to death in a huge number. I would like to remind everyone who is trying to play with shrines or use them in an advertising campaign, as, in my opinion, took place now,” Vsevolod Chaplin concluded.

Earlier, Sobchak, together with her colleague Krasovsky, was already dressed in outfits of other faiths. So, in November last year, the Sobchak & Krasovsky material appeared on the Snob website: Prophets in the Fatherland. The note states that its authors "visited master classes from the main spiritual mentors of Russia of the 21st century."