Russia is the Russian Orthodox Church, and in this sense its pastors are "on the front line today." Russian women worried about their sons dying in Ukraine should have more babies, influential Orthodox priest says
An influential Orthodox priest said that Russian women worried about their sons dying in Ukraine should have more babies.
In an interview with the Russian TV channel Spas on Wednesday, Mikhail Vasilyev was asked whether he sympathizes with mothers whose sons were recently mobilized to fight in the war in Ukraine.
"I understand very well that God has allowed every woman — in most cases — to have many children," Vasilyev said.
"And if a woman fulfills this God's commandment to procreate, it usually means that she will have more than one child, in most cases," he added. "Consequently, it will not be as painful and as terrifying for her to part with her child."
Vasilyev is the leader of the Church of Great Martyr Barbara in Rostov Oblast, Russia's sixth most populous federal region.
An influential Orthodox priest said that Russian women worried about their sons dying in Ukraine should have more babies.
In an interview with the Russian TV channel Spas on Wednesday, Mikhail Vasilyev was asked whether he sympathizes with mothers whose sons were recently mobilized to fight in the war in Ukraine.
You left out the happy ending of the Vasilyev story.
From the horses mouth, Russia Today:
Veteran Russian military priest Mikhail Vasilyev has been killed in Ukraine, the Moscow Patriarchate said in a statement on Sunday. According to media reports, he died of shrapnel wounds from a missile launched by a US-made HIMARS system.
The priest was the rector at St. Barbara cathedral, the Patriarchate’s metochion for Russia’s strategic missile forces.
The 51-year-old cleric had served with the Russian military for decades, the Patriarchate noted. Vasilyev took part in multiple armed conflicts, providing spiritual guidance to the country’s troops during Russian peacekeeping missions to Kosovo and Bosnia, conflicts in Abkhazia and Kyrgyzstan, insurgencies in Russia’s North Caucasus, and the operation in Syria.