Church, a day after a funeral was held for the murdered abbot of an Orthodox monastery. Police investigators said the body of Archimandrite Herman, who served at the Voznesenskaya Davydova Pustyn monastery in the Chekhov region about 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of Moscow, "showed signs of torture."
His hands were tied behind his back with electric cable; his head had been smashed in with a heavy blow and his safe had been broken open, investigators said. The abbot’s murderers took $200,000 in cash from a safe box in his room and apparently missed an additional $5,000 which detectives found later.
For reasons yet to be determined it took fellow monks two hours to notify the authorities after they found his body Tuesday, July 26, Russian media reported. Initial reports said police had arrested a cook and a handyman at the Voznesenskaya Davydova Pustyn monastery.
CONTROVERSIAL DONATIONS
MosNews.Com described it as one of "the richest Orthodox church institutions in the Moscow eparchate," because of donations it receives from controversial private sponsors.
Its cemetery hosts several underground figures, including the grave of Anton Malevsky, an infamous Russian mobster who died in 2001 in South Africa after his parachute folded at an altitude of 100 meters (33 feet) above ground, several news sources said.
Another grave at the same cemetery apparently contains the remains of Gennady Nedoseka, who used to head the Chekhov district mafia, until his death in a road accident in November 2004, at the age of 39.
MAFIA AND CLERIC
Media have raised questions about the ties between the Russian mafia and the cleric, whose original name was Vyacheslav Khapugin. The 40-year old Khapugin led an extraordinary double life as a businessman with close ties to the Russian mafia, an expert said.
"He was a very active businessman and quite rich," Dimitri Urushev, a journalist specializing in religious affairs, told UK based Times Online. “He organized a great reconstruction of the monastery with marble floors and everything. It was not from money old ladies give when they come to church."
The murder is the latest scandal to engulf the Russian Orthodox Church, which has been accused of using its special status to launder money, dodge taxes and trade oil, metals, diamonds and cigarettes. Last year the Governing Council in Iraq claimed the Russian Orthodox Church of receiving quotas from Saddam Hussein to trade Iraqi oil, Times Online reported. It has denied any wrongdoing.
"MORAL DEGRADATION"
In a published statement the spokesman for the Moscow Patriarchate, Vladimir Vigilyansky, suggested it was time to look beyond the controversies and described the killing as a "bestial murder… an example of a totally dissolute society and its moral degradation".
Khapugin was born in 1965 and became a monk at the age of 22 after serving in the Soviet army. He was appointed abbot of the monastery in 1995 just a few years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the post Communist turmoil some 20 Orthodox priests have been killed over the past 15 years, church sources reportedly said. (With BosNewsLife News Center and reports from Moscow)
