An elderly Russian clergyman well-known for making controversial comments concerning ladies has passed away at age 69 throughout his rehabilitation from the coronavirus, a Russian Orthodox Church representative announced Wednesday.
Earlier this year, Archpriest Dimitry Smirnov was crowned “Sexist of the Year” by Russian feminists for claiming that females have “weaker minds” than men and also comparing common-law wives to “unpaid woman of the streets.” Soon prior to his Covid-19 a hospital stay in May, Smirnov extolled the infection’s favorable impact on humanity, saying it urged “volunteerism to replace egotism.”
” The death of Father Dimitry Smirnov has just come to be known,” Vasily Rulinsky, representative for the synodal department for church charity, announced on social networks. He did not define the root cause of Smirnov’s fatality.
Rulinsky said a bishop in Far East Russia held a memorial service for Archpriest Smirnov.
Following his recovery from coronavirus, Smirnov’s colleagues informed Russian media that he had actually intended to spend all summer season fixing up from the ailment outside Moscow.
They have maintained that Smirnov did not have a severe instance of Covid-19.
Orthodox media reported that Smirnov was hospitalized in Moscow terminally ill late last month, his 2nd non-Covid-related a hospital stay considering that 2019.
Unofficial reports stated he had actually been identified with brain disease.
Throughout his chairmanship of the Russian Orthodox Church’s payment on family, Smirnov made headlines for recommending women to miss college and prepare for childbirth instead, comparing artificial insemination fertilization to Nazi experiments and claiming that abortion in Russia is worse than the Holocaust.
He had additionally openly sustained the Russian Orthodox Church’s questionable method of true blessing nuclear tools, calling them the “salvation of the Russian people and its culture.”
The Russian Orthodox Church had initially withstood recommendations to close its doors to its more than 150 million fans, a move that resulted in infections and fatalities amongst the clergy. The church eventually recommended worshippers to stay home in late March as the pandemic worsened across Russia.