The Priest Who Beat Punk Rock: The Kremlin's Orthodox Link

TIME
By Simon Shuster

Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin speaks during a rally in support of
Russian Orthodox Church and Patriarch Kirill in Moscow on July 22, 2012.

RUSSIA---Long before the punk band Pussy Riot was formed last fall, Father Vsevolod Chaplin, a senior clergyman of the Orthodox Church, had made himself an icon for conservative Russian values, sort of like what you might get if Rush Limbaugh and Pat Robertson squeezed into the cassock of an Orthodox priest. In 2010, while campaigning for a nationwide “dress code,” he proclaimed that women who wear revealing outfits are guilty of inciting rape. On Friday, a district court in Moscow sentenced three members of that feminist punk band – founded on opposition to the rule of President Vladimir Putin — to two years in prison on charges that amount to blasphemy. [link]