A priest who delivered a funeral oration for Alexei Navalny last month will no longer be able to conduct religious services for three years, under the terms of a decree signed by the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, published recently on the website of the Patriarchate of Moscow. In addition to this ban, the priest, Dimitri Safronov, can no longer “wear the cassock and the cross”, we can read in this decree signed by Patriarch Kirill on April 15.
Dimitri Safronov, who until then officiated in a church in the center of Moscow, will now exercise the functions of sacristan in another church in the Russian capital, according to this decree, which does not specify the reasons for this sanction.
But according to Alexei Navalny’s supporters, Dimitri Safronov delivered a funeral oration on March 26, i.e. 40 days after the death of the opponent, in accordance with Orthodox tradition, and this is why he would have been sanctioned. The service took place in the presence of the opponent’s family and supporters, at the Moscow cemetery of Borissovo where Alexeï Navalny is buried.