Father Sergiy, disgraced and excommunicated from the church, went into a “political attack”, so he was detained six months after the seizure of the monastery, said Tatyana Merzlyakova, human rights ombudsman in the Sverdlovsk region. Her words were conveyed by RIA Novosti .
According to her, the detention of Sergius is not only an interchurch event, but also a state one. “Sergius launched some kind of” political attack “and everyone paid for it. Let’s hope that they [the nuns] heard me. Too zealous, aggressive propaganda played against them,” the Ombudsman said.
Merzlyakova also noted that the children living in the monastery were often visited by the guardianship authorities. The Ombudsman added that she does not understand why law enforcement began storming the monastery before the New Year. The children were taken out into the street at 1 am, but during the assault, the students of the monastery did not suffer, she said.
Earlier it became known that against the former schema-monk Sergius, who seized the Middle Urals female monastery, opened a criminal case for inclinations to suicide. Special forces detained the priest on the night of December 29. The monastery was taken by storm, and the territory around the temple was cordoned off. The reason for the arrest was a video posted on social networks, where Sergiy calls on supporters to “die for Russia”.
The founder of the Sredneuralsky nunnery spoke out with public denial of the coronavirus and cursed those who wanted to close churches during the pandemic. Later he was deprived of the rank of schema-abbot, excommunicated and accused of seizing the monastery.