MOSCOW -- In March, a strange story swept through Russian online media: Police and agents of the Federal Security Service (FSB) had raided the St. Petersburg apartment of the bishop of Cherepovets and Belozersk.
According to the sketchy reports based on anonymous law enforcement sources, the authorities discovered a laboratory for producing illegal drugs there. They claimed that a mysterious 22-year-old identified as "Kain Montanelli" was living in the flat and producing and selling narcotics.
The bishop, Flavian, was dismissed from his post by the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church "for health reasons" and sent to an obscure monastery in Vologda, a sprawling region north of Moscow and east of St. Petersburg. Flavian's lawyers denied the accusations against him and said that he'd resigned as bishop of his own accord.
St. Petersburg police at the time did not issue a statement about the raid and no arrests were reported.
Flavian, whose birth name is Maksim Mitrofanov, is now living in London. He spoke exclusively by telephone with RFE/RL's Russian Service to tell his version of the story. He denies allegations of wrongdoing and alleges that the FSB is punishing him for refusing to serve as an informant.
The case marks the first time in the post-Soviet period that the FSB has gone after such a high-ranking cleric in the Russian Orthodox Church.
Bishop In Vologda
Flavian was born in Saratov in 1975. His grandmother took him to church at an early age and by the age of 13 he was serving as an altar boy, he said. He graduated from a seminary in Saratov and became a priest in 1997. For a while he taught in the same seminary, rising to become director of academic programs.
He served in the cathedral in Samara and, in 2007, was sent to serve at the Russian Orthodox cathedral in London. In 2009 he bought an apartment in London and was granted British citizenship. He says that he was given the 200,000 British pounds to purchase the flat by his father, a research physicist who had emigrated from Russia in the early 1990s.
In 2014, he was given the opportunity to become a bishop when the bishop of Vologda was promoted to metropolitan. "So I made the stupid move of leaving peaceful London and moving to Vologda," Flavian said. The Vologda eparchy was split into three parts and Flavian became the bishop of Cherepovets and Belozersk.
Russian Orthodox priests must be married, and Flavian had earlier taken a wife. He had a son from his marriage. However, to become a bishop, Flavian had to take orders as a celibate monk. Even though Orthodoxy does not recognize divorce, in Flavian's case, a divorce decree from the secular authorities in Saratov was enough to satisfy the church.
As a bishop, Flavian increased the number of monasteries in his eparchy from one to three, increasing the number of monks and working priests as well. His official salary was 1.5 million rubles ($20,500) a month.
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Article on Federal Security Service (FSB) case against the orthodox bishop of Cherepovets and Belozersk