Posted on 06/27/2008 11:45:35 AM PDT by Freelance Warrior
Moscow, June 27, Interfax - At its final Friday session, the Bishops' Council of the Russian Orthodox Church ruled that the Bishop of Anadyr and Chukotka Diomid should be defrocked.
An absolute majority of the Bishops' Council (with three abstainers) voted for "stripping Diomid of priestly privileges" due to his disobedience to hierarchy, Interfax-Religion reports.
"The Council calls Diomid to immediately repent and stop his activity. If he refuses, the Council's ruling shall be enforced," one of the Council's participants told to the agency.
The Council also fixed the deadline for such repentance - before the next session of the Holy Synod.
[...]
During the last one and half year, Bishop Diomid made several appeals calling for self-isolation of the Russian Orthodox Church and its refusal from the dialogue with government authorities, other religions and confessions, and proactive mission to young people.
Bishop Diomid also denounced using mobile phones. "I think it's a chip that a man carries with him voluntarily," he has told an Interfax-Religion correspondent
Last year Bishop Diomid urged Orthodox believers not to use Russian passport as the "number of the beast" was secretly put on its pages and not to take individual tax number, as the ruling bishop of Chukotka believed it led to the state's total control.
"This passport didn't get through the third Duma hearing, it's illegal while the old (Soviet - IF) passport is legal," Bishop Diomid has told the agency today.
On the first day of the Council's work, Diomid's followers held several protests and processions at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior to support Bishop Diomid.
[...]
Bishop Diomid's stand was discussed in his absence - the Bishop failed to attend the meeting under the pretence of feeling unwell. The Moscow Patriarchate, however, was dissatisfied with this reason for absence made public by Diomid to the press. "The reason which Bishop Diomid used to explain his absence is inadequate," Metropolitan Kirill, the head of the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations, said Wednesday answering to journalists' questions.
This bishop has some very surprising views.
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