The Georgian church has found itself at the center of an unprecedented scandal, after about three thousand documents were published on the Internet yesterday – correspondence, reports, recordings of telephone conversations and others. – related to the personal lives of senior clergy and senior staff of the Georgian Patriarchate. The opposition Pirveli TV broadcast audio and video recordings of Georgian clerics, as well as documents from the published archive.
The materials are believed to have been collected by the Georgian National Security Council for years and published by a former service staffer. They were sent in the form of reports from various people who were in the immediate vicinity of the observed persons.
The man who published them wrote: “You will never find me. Today the Church is not the House of God, but a public house. You are not worried that the Patriarchate is governed by a ‘Russian fog.’ your well-being. In these materials, you will see the scale of the catastrophe that I have been following for years, so that with God’s help you can wake up and destroy this terrible system. “
Documents show that Georgia’s security services have been monitoring the Georgian church’s most influential leaders for years, collecting cases of pedophilia and other scandalous sexual contacts (with the names of specific children). The materials are contained in a folder entitled “Adultery” and contain information about several dozen senior church officials associated with Russia and high-ranking Russian officials. Their legitimate and illegal business interests in Russia are highlighted.
Georgian Patriarch Elijah II is said to have collaborated with the KGB while studying in Moscow (1956-1960). For Bishop Vakhtang (Liparteliani) it is described how in 2014 he created a group of clergy for anti-Western propaganda on behalf of the Russian FSB.
The Metropolitan of Akhalkalki and Kumurdo Nikolai (Pachuashvili), who according to the records passed information to a Russian citizen about the meetings of Patriarch Elijah II for the sum of 30 thousand dollars, said that it was about “intrigues of an unclean force” that wants to set people up against the church. He confirmed that he knew the mentioned Russian citizen, but did not provide her with information about the patriarch.
The head of the press service of the Georgian Patriarchate Andria Jagmaidze commented on his Facebook page: “It is very bad if the spread information about illegal wiretapping corresponds to the truth. At the same time we have witnessed the spread of many false news and defamatory information from some TV channels.” .
Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili said it was another “ugly provocation against our country, against our church – the most authoritative institution. Saakashvili’s main goal and task was to discredit the main institutions.”
Georgia’s prosecutor’s office has said it will launch an investigation into breaches of private communications and illegal wiretapping. According to information from one of the Georgian televisions, the materials were provided by a former employee of the services, who worked in this department and who committed suicide two months ago.
The Georgian Patriarchate has not yet officially commented on the scandal. The patriarch’s lawyer, Edisher Karchava, said these were fabrications aimed at compromising the church and that the patriarchate had no intention of going to court “for any nonsense”.
