Vladimir Putin on Tuesday posthumously awarded Russia’s highest decoration to an Orthodox priest recently killed in Ukraine. In a statement, the Kremlin said Mikhail Vasilyev was awarded the title “Hero of the Russian Federation” for “his courage and heroism in fulfilling his civic duty.”
The Moscow Patriarchate announced on Sunday the death of this priest “in the special operations zone in Ukraine”, while carrying out “his clerical functions”.
Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Church, one of the pillars of Vladimir Putin’s power, will celebrate a special mass on Wednesday around the body of the deceased from the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow.
According to Alexander Sladkov, a correspondent for Russian public television, the Pope was killed in a Ukrainian bombardment in the occupied Kherson region, which has been plagued by a counter-offensive from Kyiv for weeks.
“He died as a soldier priest, alongside the paratroopers,” Alexander Sladkov wrote on Telegram on Sunday.
According to the Moscow Patriarchate, Mikhail Vasiliev, born in 1971, had already served as a military chaplain during Russian army operations in Kosovo, Bosnia, the Caucasus and Syria.
“be fruitful”
Recently, he had been talked about after an interview on the Russian Orthodox TV channel “Spas”.
Asked about the case of a Russian mother who had sent her son abroad to prevent him from being mobilized to fight in the Ukraine, he had recommended that women have more children to alleviate their pain.
“If a lady follows God’s injunction ‘Be fruitful, multiply’ and rejects in a broad sense all artificial means of termination of pregnancy, then she will usually have more than one child. And then it will not be so painful to part with,” he said. .
Source: BFM TV
