Moscow priest Alexei Uminsky was removed from his position as rector at the Church of the Holy Trinity in Khokhly and banned from serving. Journalist Ksenia Luchenko reported this in her telegram channel “Orthodoxy and Zombies”. One of the parishioners of the church, Maria Batova, confirmed this information.
Uminsky has been rector of the Holy Trinity Church since 1993. Archpriest Andrei Tkachev, who supports the war and often appears on the Spas TV channel, was appointed in his place.
“He lived and left—completely without prayer and faith. There is no funeral service, no memorial service, no church commemoration for him,” Tkachev commented on the death of Mikhail Gorbachev. It is known that it was Father Alexei Uminsky who conducted the funeral service for the only president of the USSR.
Uminsky is widely known for his independent public position. In 2021, he called on the authorities to show mercy to Alexei Navalny and allow doctors to work as a politician. In 2019, the priest came to court for the sentencing of the defendant in the “Moscow case” Yegor Zhukov, and in 2022 he visited Vladimir Kara-Murza in the pre-trial detention center.
According to the Dozhd TV channel, the reason for the ban in the ministry was Uminsky’s interview with Alexey Venediktov, which was published in November 2023. In a conversation with the former editor-in-chief of Echo of Moscow, he calls the war a war and talks about the feelings he experienced on February 24, 2022 of the year.
The Moscow diocese has not yet confirmed the information about the removal of Uminsky from his rectorship.
Back in December, priest Vladimir Lapshin, a student of the famous theologian and preacher Alexander Men, who was killed in 1990, was removed from his position as rector at the Church of the Dormition of the Virgin Mary on Gazetny Lane. Lapshin has served in this temple since 1996.
Priest Ioann Gruzinov was appointed in his place. As Ksenia Luchenko clarifies, Gruzinov is a student of Archpriest Vladimir Volgin, whom Komsomolskaya Pravda called Svetlana Medvedeva’s confessor in 2008.