Feofania, mother superior of Moscow’s Pokrovsky Convent, will “go to hell,” Russian Orthodox deacon and blogger Andrey Kuraev has said. According to media reports, in 2016 she purchased a $135k Mercedes-Benz S-Class S500 4MATIC.
“Ride, mother, ride,” he wrote on his blog on Monday. “One must go to hell in comfort.” Feofania isn’t the only well-known member of the Russian Orthodox Church to be criticized for the apparent flaunting of wealth. The leader of the church, Patriarch Kirill, is a regular recipient of abuse for his spending habits, and he has been photographed on multiple occasions wearing expensive luxury watches.
Feofania has been a nun at the Pokrovsky Convent for 25 years, and in 2018 she received the Order of Merit for the Fatherland from Russian President Vladimir Putin. The medal is handed out to Russians deemed responsible for “outstanding contributions to the state.” In the summer of 2015, she became the head of Moscow’s five-star Pokrovskaya Hotel, built to house pilgrims.
Feofania, Mother Superior of Moscow’s Pokrovsky Convent
In his blog, Kuraev also accused Feofania of refusing to help financially with the treatment of the seven-month-old son of priest Alexey Golubev.
Kuraev himself is no stranger to controversy. In April, Patriarch Kirill forbade Kuraev from serving after he insulted the memory of a deceased archpriest.
Since 2013, Kuraev has written extensively on his blog about the existence of a ‘gay lobby’ inside the church. In that same year, the deacon was fired from the science board of the Moscow Theological Academy in response to his online media presence.
