Orthodox Priest Who Supported The Protests Leaves Belarus
- 31.12.2023, 11:45
The Russian Orthodox Church allowed him to join the Polish Church.
In a video message on December 30, Orthodox priest Andrei Nozdryn, who until recently was the rector of the Senior Priest of the Church of the Transfiguration of Jesus in the village of Kamotava, Hrodna district, said that he had come to Poland.
He is waiting for the Polish Orthodox Church, the transition to the jurisdiction of which the Russian Orthodox Church allowed him, to determine a new place of service for him.
“December 25 was my last service in the village of Kamotava. Unfortunately, I had to leave, so I will continue to pray in Poland for all of us and the whole of Belarus. Now I am in the monastery of the Holy Great-Martyr Demetrius of Thessaloniki in Saki. I'm praying for everyone. Maybe I will like it so much that I will become a monk, and in a week I will find out the place of my permanent service for the Polish Orthodox Church," he said.
The Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church allowed the clergyman of the Hrodna Diocese, Priest Andrei Nozdryn, to come under the jurisdiction of the Polish Orthodox Church. At a meeting of the Synod on December 27, it was announced that Nozdrin had submitted a corresponding petition to Archbishop Anthony of Hrodna and Vaukavysk. He also handed over to the head of the diocese a letter from Metropolitan Sawa of Warsaw and All Poland, who expressed his readiness to consider accepting a Belarusian priest into the clergy of the Warsaw-Belsk Diocese if the Russian Orthodox Church gives a vacation letter. Archbishop Anthony did not object, the Holy Synod supported the transition to Nozdryn.
Nozdryn was one of those who helped the detainees during the 2020 protests and subsequent repressions.
He also openly condemned the war unleashed by Russia in Ukraine, after which he was reported by the propagandist Volha Bondarava. The security forces held a "preventive conversation" with Nozdryn about "the inadmissibility of committing extremist offences and crimes."
In October this year, he was fined BYN 555 for "spreading extremist information."