Hundreds of people came on Sunday to a southern Moscow church to pay their last respects to a well-known Russian Orthodox priest who was recently murdered.
Priest Daniil Sysoyev, 34, who criticized Islam, was shot dead in his St. Thomas church by a masked gunman Thursday evening. His choirmaster was injured in the attack. Investigators said Friday their main theory is that religious hatred was behind the crime.
Sysoyev, who was married with three children, was known for his missionary work among Muslim immigrants, and had received numerous death threats. He was known to have converted more than 80 Muslims to Christianity over the past two years.
The gunman entered the church, asked for Sysoyev, and when the priest said he was Sysoyev, shot him, according to chief Moscow investigator Anatoly Bagmet.
"Any murder is a grave sin. But the murder of a priest in a church is also a challenge to the law of God," Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia said Friday.
"This sin will not be left unrevenged by God," the head of the Russian Orthodox Church said.
Among those who came to bid farewell to Father Daniil was Alexander Veretennikov, the head of the Zaporozhye Cossacks' mission in Moscow.
"We propose organizing, together with Ukrainian Cossacks, the guard of churches in Russia and Ukraine to prevent such things from happening," he told RIA Novosti Sunday.
The murder has stirred a wave of condemnation from all religious groups in Russia, and demands to ensure better security for the clergy.
Sysoyev also worked with people seeking to quit religious sects, and Russian State Duma lawmakers asked on Friday for more information on the groups involved to consider measures to restrict foreign religious organizations' activities in Russia.
Russia has seen several murders of priests and monks that caused a great stir in society. Archpriest Alexander Men, a well-known Russian Orthodox theologian and writer, was killed in 1990 with an axe outside of his home in the Moscow Region.
Three monks were killed in the Optina Pustyn monastery in the Kaluga Region on Easter in 1993; the killer told investigators he had received an order to do so from the devil. Another priest, Father German, was found murdered in a monastic cell in the Moscow Region in 2005.
MOSCOW, November 22 (RIA Novosti)
