The former abbot of the Middle Ural women’s monastery Fr. Sergius (Nikolai Romanov), who is serving a seven-year sentence, begs Putin for clemency. In the appeal, the former abbot says he helped build twenty churches and five monasteries in the Sverdlovsk region, and since 2014 has brought families with children “from the war zone in Ukraine.” The former schihegumen noted that he asked to be sent to the war in Ukraine as a medical worker or construction worker, but was denied because of his advanced age. For this reason, he now “takes spiritual care of the heroes of the special military operation” and assures that he is a patriot and loyal to the authorities. Now he is resuming his request to be sent to the “special military operation zone,” as Russia calls the war against Ukraine, which is eligible for release from prison under the country’s new laws.
The former abbot Sergiy (Romanov) was arrested at the end of 2020 in his monastery by a special forces raid. His case gained widespread public attention because of his fame as an ultra-conservative “confessor of the faith” who was an alternative to the ever-compromising official church authority. He became especially popular during the pandemic, when he denied the existence of the disease, boycotted sanitary measures and preached that this position was tantamount to a profession of faith. Such views were then inherent in many religious people, but he had influence and popularity among circles of the so-called Russian elite.
Video sermons with curses against church authority and accusations of a conspiracy by the authorities drew attention to him. In them he called the power “satanic” and “antichrist”. The priest was accused and convicted of “inciting a minor to commit suicide” because of his sermon, during which he asked parishioners if they were ready to die for Russia and for their children. According to other articles, the former abbot became accused after refusing to allow representatives of the Ekaterinburg Diocese to take an inventory of the monastery’s property. In January 2023, the court announced the final sentence – seven years in a penal colony.
Before the pandemic, schihegumen Sergiy (Romanov) was known as the leader of the so-called “sect of Tsarebozhniks”, whose most popular member was the Russian MP Natalia Poklonskaya. She did much to promote him in the media as a “miracle worker”, “confessor” and “exorcist”. Later, Natalia Poklonskaya got married and changed her attitude towards him, saying that she was in a sect. In the women’s monastery, which he led, gathered “tsarebozhniki” (Russian monarchists, who raised the last Russian emperor into a cult), Cossacks, politicians and businessmen, former prisoners.
The former abbot had accepted the priesthood, although before his conversion to the faith he had been in prison for murder. According to church canons, this is inadmissible – the person who took human life can repent and even become a saint, but the canons categorically forbid him to perform the Eucharist.
