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Church Rocked by Homosexual Scandal




The Russian Orthodox Church is facing an unprecedented public scandal over homosexuality, with a group of priests from one of Russia's largest dioceses accusing their bishop of coercing seminarians into sex.


Such matters have been dealt with quietly by the highly traditional church, which considers homosexual conduct a grave sin. But the priests from Yekaterinburg, in the Ural Mountains, have made their complaints against Bishop Nikon impossible to ignore by airing their grievance in the news media.


Although the homosexuality of some monks and bishops is an open secret within church circles, church leaders have acted as if homosexuality within the church does not exist. While Western churches have extensively debated the place of homosexuals in the church, discussion of the issue has remained off-limits in Orthodox Christianity.


The bishop's supporters say the accusations are false, and that people were bribed into testifying against him. They say that behind the conflict lie the financial interests of priests, who do not want to share their revenues with the diocesan office.


Nikon, 38, whose lay name is Oleg Mironov, was appointed bishop in 1993 and led what appeared to be a spectacular religious revival in the Sverdlovsk region, of which Yekaterinburg is the capital. The number of churches has grown from 80 to about 250, and 13 monasteries have been started, along with the restoration of missionary, educational and social work.


Earlier this year, local clergy brought to the Holy Synod signed statements from seminarians saying they had been abused by Nikon. The synod, the church's ruling body of 12 bishops chaired by Patriarch Alexy II, sent a commission led by the synod's chancellor, Metropolitan Sergy of Solnechnogorsk, to investigate. Based on the commission's investigation, the synod decided April 1 to remove the bishop's chief opponents, Hegumens Avraam Reidman and Tikhon Zatekin, from their posts as abbots of the region's biggest monasteries.


The synod called on the clerics to "repent and make peace with the bishop." Nikon was reprimanded for "omissions in the management of the diocese."


A group of local clergy were so discouraged by the synod's decision that they went public. Reports about the conflict appeared in the local media and were placed on a web site called "The Pain of the Church" (http://www.chat.ru/~pravdolubov/


index.html).


"We disagree with the synod's decision, which has actually supported a homosexual bishop," a group of church intellectuals from the town of Nizhny Tagil wrote in an open letter to Patriarch Alexy earlier this month. "We had hoped for a just solution of this case within the church. But the synod's decision shocked us ... because it is far from the truth."


A signed statement addressed to the patriarch says former seminary student Dmitry Romanov was sent to the bishop's dacha soon after his enrollment at the seminary in August 1997 under pretext of helping with chores. He was under 18. There, his statement says, he was given vodka and taken to bishop in the adjacent bath house, where the bishop took him by the hand, kissed him and then took him to his residence, where he pressured him for sex. "I carried out his wish and lay down with him," Romanov wrote.


Later, the statement says, Nikon told Romanov that if he told anyone, even during confession, he would be "buried under another coffin." Soon after, Romanov was expelled from the seminary.


"I am ready to witness to what is said here before the cross and Gospels," Romanov wrote at the bottom of his report.


Sergei Tsyganov, a worker at the Verkhoturye monastery, said in his statement that in 1996 he was given 6 million rubles in exchange for "playing the man's part" during sex with Nikon.


Other reports tell how Nikon instructed priests to supply him with men, confiscated valuable icons and vestments from parishes, extorted bribes, such as a Volvo car, from monasteries, beat up subordinates and held drunken parties with top regional officials and generals.


Several complaints corroborated news reports last year that Nikon had ordered books by leading 20th-century Orthodox theologians to be burned.


Bishops, who are selected from among celibate monks, have absolute canonical power in their dioceses. However, they are financially dependent on parishes, which prompts frequent tensions between bishops and priests.


When the scandal spilled to the local media, Nikon's opponents were accused of defending their own financial interests by forging ***kompromat,*** or scandalous material, against the bishop. The Yekaterinburg newspaper Podrobnosty alleged that Hegumen Avraam was involved in smuggling gold and precious stones and money laundering for shady businesses.


The diocesan newspaper editor, Hieromonk Dmitry Baibakov, said on Yekaterinburg television that the anti-Nikon campaign was like a medieval inquisition. "If they wanted to destroy a woman, she was accused of witchcraft and men - of sexual perversion. Such charges are impossible to disprove," he said.


In April, when dozens people holding signs such as "No Place For Sodomites In Our Church!" and "Our Bishop is a Pederast!" appeared outside churches, Nikon disappeared from the public eye. The telephone in his office was not answered.


One of the protesting priests, Foma Abel, said in a telephone interview from Nizhny Tagil that the information war has undermined people's trust in the church. Churches in the diocese have become visibly emptier, he said.


Abel said other bishops realized Nikon was gay but quietly supported him because he was a good administrator. "This is an attempt at a brutal self-assertion by the church's gay lobby," he said. "Orthodoxy and sodomy are incompatible."


Metropolitan Sergy replied through an assistant he could grant an interview only on the basis of its full publication. He told Nezavisimaya Gazeta's religion supplement, NG-Religii, that the commission "did not find the accusations against the bishop sufficiently persuasive." One of the only two witness was drunk and the other "appeared unserious," he said.


Nikon's opponents continue to appeal to the patriarch. They also say the case is a test of whether church authorities can be accountable to church members.


"The church is not only bishops and priests, but lay people as well," said Sergei Yelnikov, a translator and parish member from Nizhny Tagil. "Even if laymen do not make decisions [regarding the appointment to church offices], they should have a mechanism to articulate their opinion regarding the bishops. Otherwise it leads to a total lack of control."

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