Fined: Monk Who Denies COVID-19 Exists & Says Putin’s A ‘traitor’

MAD monk Father Sergiy, above, who got stripped of his abbot status by the Russian Orthodox Church earlier this month, has been fined for telling his followers that COVID-19 is non-existent and that lockdown rules should be ignored.

According to this report, when the pandemic engulfed Russia, Sergiy denounced government efforts to contain the virus. In fiery sermons laced with anti-Semitic statements and vitriol against a supposed masonic “world government,” the monk described the vaccines being developed against COVID-19 as part of a global plot to control the masses via microchips.

This led to him being fined by a court in Verkhnyaya Pyshma in the Ural Mountains region 18,000 rubles (about $250)f or “inciting hatred.” The 65-year-old monk failed to attend the court hearing court hearing on July 20.

This was the second time this month that Sergiy was fined. Another court in the Urals ordered him to pay a fine of 90,000 rubles ($1,250) for spreading false information about the coronavirus.

The church banned the monk from ministry in April, but he has continued preaching and last month took charge of the convent outside Yekaterinburg that he had founded years ago. Dozens of burly volunteers, including veterans of the separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine, helped enforce his rules, while the prioress and several nuns left.

Sergiy has denounced Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “traitor to the Motherland” serving a “satanic world government” and branded Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill and other top clerics as “heretics” and “enemies of God and Holy Mother of God” who must be “thrown out.”