“We perish without the word of God”: Moscow prisoners pray for a priest

They even wrote a collective complaint to the Patriarch

Prisoners of the capital’s pre-trial detention center No. 4 “Bear” wrote a collective letter to the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia. The prisoners report that they have not been taken to the temple for many months.

The Lefortovo prisoners were even less fortunate: they don’t even have a separate church, and now every communication with the priest requires the permission of the investigator, like a … date.

Meanwhile, there is good news: SIZO No. 5 “Vodnik” will become the most accessible for religious rites. How the clergy “illuminate” the dungeons – in the material of the observer “MK”, ​​a member of the PMC of Moscow.

SIZO No. 4. We go from one cell to another with a check, and everywhere we hear: “When will they take us to the temple?” There is a large overcrowding in this isolation ward (more than a third of the prisoners are “extra”, they do not have a bed). Problems with the conditions of detention lead to the fact that people are more likely to turn to faith as a last resort.

“I would like to see the priest, you see, it would be easier,” remarks a seriously ill prisoner who lies in the aisle on a broken cot.

“You need a doctor first of all, not a priest,” his cellmate comments. But then he adds: “They haven’t been taken to the temple for a very long time, it’s true. This makes everything more difficult. All believers in our cell. We are told that there are not enough employees to take everyone who wants to see the clergyman. But why shouldn’t he come and see us himself?

In one of the most densely populated cells, the prisoners say that they wrote a collective letter to the Patriarch twice. However, they do not know the fate of the message, moreover, it seems to them that the guards did not send this appeal to the addressee.

“We ask the Patriarch to do everything possible so that all prisoners have access to the temple and the priest,” says one of the inmates. – It is impossible to be in such conditions even without the support of the church.

In fact, the clergyman comes to the pre-trial detention center from time to time, but he cannot communicate with everyone who wants to. The waiting list for withdrawal reaches several months. So even if suddenly a person urgently needs to talk to the priest, then he will not do it earlier than in 3-4 months.

A large beautiful temple was built on the territory of Matrosskaya Tishina long ago, but not a single prisoner has been taken there yet. According to employees, the object either cannot be consecrated, or it is simply not accepted by a special commission.

In general, today there are problems with taking people to the church in all Moscow pre-trial detention centers, except for the “Vodnik” (SIZO No. 5). This detention center was the most “churched”, so to speak. Now it is also headed by Dmitry Komnov, who graduated from the Orthodox St. Tikhon Humanitarian University and worked in the Russian Orthodox Church (he was responsible for the prison ministry).

“SIZO No. 5 is visited by five clergymen,” says Komnov. “Prisoners are taken out four times a week, but there will be more. I would like to make the insulator exemplary in this sense. Many prisoners consider visiting the temple even more important than going for a walk. Everyone should have the opportunity to both confess and take communion.

While some prisoners are waiting for a response from the Patriarch, others from Lefortovo say that they are no longer allowed to communicate with the priest without the approval of the investigator. For information, there is no separate temple in this pre-trial detention center – there is only a small room on the first floor of the main building where prisoners are kept. This room can accommodate no more than three people. But even rare conclusions here to the priest (who, by the way, is officially assigned to the pre-trial detention center) cannot now be counted on. Prisoners say that a visit to a priest was equated with a date, and this requires permission from the investigator. Some inmates allegedly even tried to get it, but, according to them, the investigator considered this a privilege that he can only give in exchange for cooperation and an admission of guilt.