A customs officer who stripped naked during a religious service in Moscow was sent to a mental hospital, while a church spokesman blamed the incident on bad influence of detained punk rockers.
The male officer stripped in the downtown Yelokhovo Cathedral on Sunday, when Orthodox Christians celebrate Palm Sunday.
The man, identified as Alexander Darakov, 29, mumbled something upon entering the cathedral and then began to take his clothes off, a police spokesperson said.
But churchgoers called the police, which promptly marched him off and later handed over to medics for a psychiatric examination, the report said.
It remained unclear what prompted Darakov’s actions, but archpriest Dmitry Smirnov, the head of of the synodal department of the Russian Orthodox Church’s Moscow patriarchate, blamed the incident on “spring exacerbation” and influence of the notorious female punk group Pussy Riot, Rusnovosti.ru reported.
Five masked members of Pussy Riot stormed the Christ the Savior Cathedral in downtown Moscow in February, performing a “punk prayer” that denounced the church’s ties to the government in the altar zone.
Three alleged performers were detained and face up to seven years in jail on hooliganism charges. Amnesty International recognized them prisoners of conscience, but leadership of the Orthodox Church refused to pardon their “sacrilegious” stunt.
