Former Protodeacon Andrei Kuraev, defrocked by Patriarch Kirill, announced his decision to leave Russia, Interfax reports.
“And yet – departure. A year and a half of thought and hesitation passed. In the end, I decided not to be like the hero of the joke who died after refusing to board a rescue helicopter three times. If the Provider gives an opportunity that is desired by many and inaccessible to many, it is worth accepting,” he wrote on Monday evening on his blog.
Without citing all the arguments for and against such a decision, Kuraev noted that many of his motives are “completely outside of politics.” “My Moscow world is destroyed. To some extent, the pain of a lonely old age can be softened by immersion in the atmosphere of a happy Prague childhood and the understanding that my parents spent the happiest years of their lives here,” he said, adding that one of his former classmates had already bought him a scooter.
In Europe, Kuraev plans to give lectures and hold public meetings. “So this is labor migration. I hope it’s seasonal,” he joked, adding that for now his thoughts “are not about how to settle down there, but about how to amputate here.”
Patriarch Kirill deprived Kuraev of the holy rank of protodeacon in April of this year.
Source: Rosbalt
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