The Russian Orthodox Church has cursed and excommunicated a journalist for “satanic lies” in accusing the abbess of a monastery of scaring locals into selling their homes for “peanuts.”

The church used excommunication and the anathema ecclesiastical curse as powerful weapons against its enemies under the tsars but rarely imposes the sanctions today.

The Pskov diocese in western Russia excommunicated the local journalist after a court found him guilty of libel for an article headlined “A Wasp’s Nest Under Golden Domes,” which also accused lay sisters at the monastery of smoking and drinking in their robes.

The journalist, Oleg Dementyev, said he stood by his claims and would appeal the court decision but not the excommunication.

“There is no question that corruption has appeared at the monastery,” he said by telephone from Pskov, a city near the country’s border with Estonia.

The Pskov diocese said it had excommunicated Dementyev for “ongoing heinous slander and satanic lies against the resident nuns of the Spaso-Yeleazarovsky Monastery,” in a statement posted on Monday on its web site, Pskov-eparhia.ellink.ru.

The region’s diocesan council simultaneously declared an anathema against the journalist.

The article, printed in a local newspaper, accused the monastery’s abbess of threatening violence to persuade locals to sell their houses to her for “peanuts.”