The owner of Mutabor, Mikhail Danilov, accompanied the fragments of relics transferred to the Moscow church with a certificate of authenticity, which was signed by the Italian subdeacon Franco G. Cerruti, who left the diocese three years before the signing of the document. Radio Liberty and the telegram channel “Carts and Memes” drew attention to this.
The diocese of the city of Novara in the Italian province of Piedmont has previously issued similar certificates with Cerruti’s signature. Journalists found photographs of such documents dated 2011 and 2013. The Episcopal vicar confirmed that Cerruti served in the Curia of Novara until 2015, in charge of the repository of relics.
Radio Liberty did not receive an answer to the question of whether this means that the relics of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker are accompanied by a false certificate of authenticity. Journalists also tried to clarify the method of acquiring the relics of the saint from Mikhail Danilov, but he did not respond to the message.
Franco Cerruti also certified a piece of the Belt of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which in 2011, businessman and member of United Russia Vadim Zhimirov donated to the Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg. The diocese of Novara also certified a document on the authenticity of the ark with a particle of the relics of St. Andrew the First-Called, which Zhimirov personally handed over to Patriarch Kirill.
In 2018, the Liven diocese in the Oryol region received the relics of St. Spyridon of Trimifuntsky from Moscow businessman Yuri Evdokimov. The documents for the relics were again signed by the Italian Cerruti, back in 2013. At the same time, he certified the relics of Faith, Nadezhda, Lyubov and their mother Sophia, which later ended up in the courtyard of the Intercession-Tervenichesky Monastery in St. Petersburg.
In addition, the subdeacon confirmed the authenticity of the ark, assembled from 18 relics, until 2014. As a result, Father Ilya Lavrentyev donated the set to the church in honor of John the Baptist in Yucca in the Leningrad region.
Journalists who collected information about the certificates that Cerruti signed noticed that the origin of the relics in most cases is not Italian. For example, Danilov claimed that he acquired the shrines in the Vatican, Zhimirov said that he brought them from the Greek Athos, and the website of the Oryol diocese said that Evdokimov brought the gift from the Spanish province of Navarre. There was probably an error in the text due to the similarity of sound with Novara.
The Vatican officially banned the sale of relics at the end of 2017 as part of its fight against corruption. In the Christian tradition, the sale of shrines is also impossible — relics can only be transferred or received as a gift, Andrei Kordochkin, a clergyman of the Russian Orthodox Church, told Current Time. According to him, despite the religious rules and restrictions of auctions, the relics are put up for sale — the seller indicates a reliquary as the main item, and the relics go as a gift to him.
“The Church, of course, cannot welcome the transformation of the relics of saints into the subject of purchase and sale, but there is no direct ban on their purchase,” Kordochkin added.
On December 20, the Mutabor club hosted a “naked” party for blogger Anastasia Ivleeva, which outraged pro-government activists. As a result, Ivleeva herself and her celebrity guests recorded videos with explanations. Rapper VACÍO (Nikolai Vasiliev), who came to the party with one sock on his penis, received 15 days of arrest, and then another 10 days.
Mutabor canceled the New Year's event after Ivleeva's party. This happened immediately after the visit of security forces and representatives of Rospotrebnadzor. A protocol was drawn up against the Mutabora legal entity, the Art Center company, for violating sanitary and epidemiological requirements due to beer poisoning of a visitor (Article 6.6 of the Administrative Code).
On Christmas, January 7, telegram channels published a video in which the owner of “Mutabor” gives fragments of the relics of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker to the Moscow Church of the Sign of the Icon of the Mother of God. “We say that we are against obscurantism, diabolism, we support the church in every possible way,” Danilov noted during the transfer of the relics to the rector of the Church of the Sign, Mikhail Gulyaev.