The gift of God

Bishop of the Livensky and Malo -Arkhangelsk Nectarium (Nikolai Seleznev) in an ultimatum form demanded that the Oryol News agency delete an article about his Land Cruiser V8 car. The click letter is published on the website of the publication. The bishop threatens journalists with a criminal article on insulting the feelings of believers.

"I am extremely outraged by your false and insulting article posted on your Internet resource Newsorel.ru relating to my ministry of the Russian Orthodox Church and the people of God! Such antics undermine the spiritual and moral foundations of our society, throwing a shadow to the Holy Church and its honest ministers. Do not hope that your public lie will remain unanswered by the Russian (spelling and punctuation of the original are preserved).

Nectarium demanded to remove all the information about him "from your immoral media". “Otherwise, I will be forced to bring you to legal liability under Article 148 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation clause 1 (public actions expressing a clear disrespect for society and committed in order to insult the religious feelings of believers),” the bishop threatened.

"What exactly could insult the priest, given that even in the Oryol Metropolis, they confirmed the fact of giving a foreign car with agricultural holding, it is impossible to understand from the letter," the publication notes.

Prior to this, the Oryol News reported that the nectarium became the owner of the Elite Toyota Land Cruiser V8, the cost of which is estimated at 5-6 million rubles. The bishop registered the car on himself. At the same time, numbers are installed on the SUV that, as a rule, government cars are equipped in the region.

The metropolis explained that the nectarium did not buy a car with the money of the diocese, but received it as a gift from a certain commercial structure.

The secretary of Bishop Hieromonk Alexander (Buchkin) said that the diocese of claims to the "Oryol news" has no complaints, and called the published letter a fake. "I, as a secretary of the diocesan bishop, officially declare that Vladyka Nektarius in" Oryol News "did not write any letters. That is, this letter posted on the site is directly a fake," Hieromonk said.

The Governor of the Oryol Region Vadim Parakogo said that journalists should not discuss the life of the priests. “When journalists begin to ask questions, who lives from the clergy, I have one question: who authorized this question to ask?” Said Pisassky. “God is not a fraer. He sees everything. And the judgment happens only one: God's court. We have this to the Patriarch: not those hours, he doesn’t live like that, not on those cars.”

Meanwhile, the deputy chairman of the Synodal Department of the Moscow Patriarchate on the relationship of the Church with the society and the media, Vakhtang Kipshidze said that the central bodies of the Russian Orthodox Church would not understand this situation. "This is a matter of diocesan level," he said.

Back in 2012, Patriarch Kirill called on the ministers of the Russian Orthodox Church to refuse to acquire expensive cars , so as not to "provoke a negative public discussion and not discredit the clergy." “Let's think that we use vehicles that ill -wishers will not use as a reason for discrediting the clergy. I urge you to modestly and a reasonable approach, which should also remove the appropriate accusation from the church and the clergy,” the patriarch at the Moscow Diocese Assembly said.

According to the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church, often expensive cars are bought by sponsors, but here it is necessary to think "twenty times." “I don’t want to make recommendations, but there are Japanese and Korean cars, some European cars that are not inferior in either comfort or security, but the brand of this machine will never appear in the news,” the Patriarch turned to the clergy.