For more than 20 years, Father Aleksei Uminsky served as the rector of a church in a quiet corner of central Moscow. His dismissal and defrocking took about 10 days.
On January 4, 2024, three days before Russian Orthodox Christmas, the archpriest responsible for the area phoned Uminsky and told him to appear before him the following day. When he did so, the archpriest handed him a decree suspending him from the ministry – revoking his authority to preach to his flock.
Less than an hour later, Uminsky stood before a disciplinary committee whose four members did not identify themselves but asked him several questions about why he was not reading a prayer in support of Russia’s war on Ukraine in his services, then confirmed his suspension and ordered him to remove the cross from around his neck immediately.
In the days after Christmas, Uminsky was repeatedly summoned by email and phone to appear before a church court for a hearing on his potential defrocking. He did not show up instead leaving Russia after a fellow priest told him he was to be arrested after the ecclesiastical trial.
He soon received an email notification that the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Moscow Patriarch Kirill, had approved the January 13 diocese court decision to defrock him for “refusing [...] to read the prayer for Holy Rus during the Divine Liturgy,” Uminsky told Systema, RFE/RL’s Russian investigative unit.
