Russian Church: endless discourse on expensive possessions of clergy as a sign of spiritual disorder

Moscow, April 15, Interfax - The Russian Orthodox Church warns believers against focusing too much attention on material matters.

"I happened to visit palaces in full feather and wander about slums in a ragged cassock. I am sure that the Church accepts both. We should not focus too much attention on either of the above," head of the Synodal Department for Church and Society Relations Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin states in his answer to journalist Ivan Semenov.

Semenov has published an open letter calling Father Vsevolod to offer his apologies for his public address where he asserted that the members of clergy have the right to wear expensive things as such things emphasize the social prestige of the Church.

In his answer, Father Vsevolod stressed that "if Christians endlessly discourse on the "glamour and misery" of clothes and watches, it is a sign of their spiritual disorder. Or envy. Or an undying quasi-dissident habit to curse everything which is strong, expensive and powerful."

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