Russian Orthodox Church suspends priest who prayed at Navalny's grave
https://apple.news/AcvFC4lm1RrSmgbpWvNUOHgSummary
Priest led memorial service 40 days after Navalny died
No reason given by Church for punishing himFuture to be decided after three years of 'penance'
Other priests disciplined for opposition to war
A Russian Orthodox priest who led a memorial service last month at the grave of late opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been suspended from clerical duties and ordered to serve three years of "penance".
Dmitry Safronov has prayed several times at the Moscow grave of Navalny and conducted a service there on March 26 to mark 40 days since Navalny's death in an Arctic penal colony.
His suspension was announced by the Moscow Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church, which said he would be demoted to the role of psalm-reader.
No reason was stated for the punishment, the latest in a series that the Church has imposed on priests deemed sympathetic to the opposition or not sufficiently supportive of Russia's war in Ukraine.Navalny, who was 47 when he died and who had been in jail since 2021, was the vocal face of resistance within Russia to what he and his supporters said was Putin’s increasingly authoritarian and corrupt rule. He had been serving three prison sentences amounting to more than 30 years on charges he and his supporters said were fabricated.
Navalny was detained after returning to Russia from Germany, where he had recovered from what German doctors said was poisoning with a Soviet-era nerve agent, Novichok. The U.S. government and independent investigators blamed his poisoning on the Kremlin.
His death came months after he had skipped a series of court dates and appeared to have gone missing, only to turn up at a prison colony known as the Polar Wolf, in the remote Arctic region of Yamalo-Nenets, a bitingly cold, highly isolated and difficult area to reach.
In December, he surfaced on social media and flashed his typically acerbic humor, telling his supporters: “I am your new Santa Claus.” _---Wall Street Journal
