Patriarch Kirill Says Clerics Should be Held Accountable for Failure to Abide by Anti-Coronavirus Measures

Interfax ^ | 4/27/20

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Moscow, April 27, Interfax - Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia has ordered the clergy to strictly abide by Covid-19 prevention requirements, adding that otherwise clerics will have to be held accountable for negative consequences.

"Unfortunately, not everyone took this threat seriously at the initial stages of the spread of the infection, ignoring warnings from doctors and church authorities. This led to a large number of cases in individual monasteries and some churches. By his special order, His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia stated that clerics should be held to account for failure to abide by instructions aimed at limiting the spread of the coronavirus infection," the working group under the auspices of the patriarch said on Monday.

"In cases when failure to abide by these orders and instructions causes people to contract the coronavirus infection and subsequently die due to this disease, the culprit may face a church trial and in other cases may face church and administrative liability for intentionally ignoring measures that help protect large numbers of people from contracting this fatal disease," the patriarch said in his order published on the website of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Life in churches and parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church will gradually return to normal as the sanitary and epidemiological situation improves, the working group said.

A public sermon in which priest Sergy (Romanov) from a monastery in Sredneuralsk dismisses the Covid-19 pandemic as a myth and calls for disobedience to the senior clergy and authorities has drawn outcry on social networks and in the media. Father Sergiy also cursed those who have temporarily closed churches during the pandemic and warned of the creation of "Satan's electronic camp."