In my last video, I talked about how Eastern Orthodox Churches all over the world were
ignoring measures put in place to slow the spread of the coronavirus, encouraging their
congregations to gather in large groups, without social distancing or requiring masks, to sing,
kiss icons, and partake of communion with the same spoon.
But one church in particular stood out, putting their workers and members at risk.
And while their head priest and abbess attempted to cover up the scandal and subsequent outbreak,
those affected deserve to have their story told.
What follows is the nightmare of St. Elizabeth Monastery in Minsk, Belarus - a massive complex
consisting of 8 churches with 20 workshops, and almost two thousand employees.
It’s home to 130 nuns.
Despite a global pandemic sweeping across Europe, this church’s leadership willfully
ignored safety guidelines and remained open holding services every week all the way through
Easter.
Thousands of congregants flocked to their services.
And what’s worse, the priests and nuns already knew the virus was in their midst.
Weeks before their massive Easter celebration, the virus had inevitably begun making its
way through the church's ranks.
They knew about it.
Some took tests, and they came back positive.
But instead of closing their doors and moving their services online to prevent the spread
of Covid-19, they were more concerned about people finding out.
So the Abbess and Archpriest attempted a cover-up.
They kept the church open to the public, with no preventative measures to slow the spread
of the disease, but they forbade the nuns from disclosing this information to the outside
world and claimed that their faith would protect them.
To keep information about the spread of the virus in their ranks under wraps, they resulted
to cult-like tactics, cutting the nuns off from any phone and internet contact with friends
or relatives.
Meanwhile, they continued to hold services and share meals in a common dining area.
But even with their secrecy, news of the infection in ranks began slipping out.
Three of the nuns slipped away long enough to make a phone call to a Russian journalist.
Typically, in order to speak with human rights activists or with the press, Orthodox nuns
are required to get approval from the highest-ranking person at the monastery which is problematic
when the highest-ranking person is the source of the scandal you’re blowing the whistle
on.
Now it’s not like these nuns could just easily leave the monastery.
They had given up everything and left the world behind to dawn the habit, so in making
this phone call, they risked everything.
But compelled to do the right thing, they picked up the phone and called a journalist
for the Russian Reporter.
Their voices were excited but raspy, "Everything is a lie!
Everything."
They said.
"Out of 130 nuns, at least 100 are sick.
How can we preach the gospel while simultaneously deceiving people!?"
They informed the reporter how the sick were being secretly relocated to another building
out of sight.
If asked why some people had been moved, they were told to tell visiting doctors that it
was because of building repairs and lie about the spread of the infection and the quarantine
measures.
The nuns were given the following strict instructions, "For our parishioners, the monastery is business
as usual.
None of your acquaintances, friends, or any of the church’s employees should know about
the quarantine inside the monastery.
Masks should not be worn by people, out in the street, or in the temple.
Mother and father are aware of all the measures taken."
As disease was spreading through the church, the monastery's head priest, Father Andrei
Lemeshonok, a cult of personality believed to be a saint, publicly preached the following
message to packed out crowds of parishioners, "Grace disinfects and heals everything, and
in the church, one cannot get sick.
But the sick can come to the temple and be healed."
And people bought it wholesale!
They flocked to the church in droves, some hoping for healing - not realizing that at
least 60 nuns had tested positive for Covid-19.
On Easter Sunday alone, hundreds of people took communion from a single spoon (970 people
according to the nuns) - a number that the head priest would later not only confirm but
almost triple: admitting to multiple services of a similar size.
The spoon wasn't disinfected or cleaned between participants, and when one girl, desperate
to partake, but concerned about the pandemic, burst out in tears and begged the priest if
she could simply but wipe the spoon clean, she was scolded and told to go to another
church and take communion there.
Needless to say, the church's congregants began to get sick - testing positive for Covid-19.
According to local doctors, immediately after the Easter service, 40 people from the monastery
were taken to the hospital.
23 of them were seminarians.
But once again, the monastery, more concerned with its image than the safety of its congregants,
tried to cover its tail.
They didn't want to be seen as the source of the outbreak, so they told the nuns to
say that they weren't sick during Easter, but only came down with the virus afterwards.
Which is exactly what Father Lemeshonok told the press on May 7.
Facing criticism, he argued that you can't get sick from Holy Communion, resorting to
anecdotes to make his case.
A case for a position not held by the global medical community.
This argument is very common in the Orthodox church, and I’ll be covering it in depth
in my next video, so if you’re not subscribed yet, make sure that you do so and hit the
notification bell so you don’t miss that video.
Now, in the midst of this scandal, the abbess of St. Elizabeth Monastery tested positive
for Covid-19 as did a 91-year-old archpriest.
But according to the abbess, Father Lemeshonok, tested negative - allegedly because he was
a "man of deep faith and a very special person."
Coincidentally, he suffers from several chronic illnesses.
A faith healer, who lives with chronic illness?!
However, Lemeshonok would later admit that he himself did, in fact, get sick.
Whether or not it was the coronavirus, remains unclear, though.
Shortly after Easter, people started to die, including one of the monastery's own nuns,
Mother Maria Kovalchuk.
The cause?
Complications from the coronavirus.
And that’s when Father Lemeshenok allegedly began facing backlash, claiming that people
on social media wanted him sent to prison.
He claimed this was persecution, stating, "This is normal, this is all normal.
I’m doing it not for people, but for God, it’s my job as a doctor who heals.”
But this persecution complex largely wasn't based in reality.
Sure, some people were upset, but most were overwhelmingly supportive of the church - after
all, criticizing the church is seen as taboo in much of the world (and that's certainly
the case in Belarus, where almost 92% of the population are practicing Christians).
On the other hand, the reporter who posted about her call with the nuns received comments
like, "Why are you posting this?"
And she was called a liar and provocateur.
And even though the live stream of the church's Easter service was publicly posted on their
Youtube channel showing them giving the entire congregation communion from a shared spoon
- it received a 95% upvote ratio.
And here the priest was claiming to be persecuted?
Could he be referring to government persecution?
No.
The president of this deeply religious country himself attended Easter services at an Orthodox
Church and has refused for months to take any measures to combat the virus.
He ignored the pleas of neighboring countries, ignored the advice of the WHO, and denied
there was even a problem.
Refusing to institute quarantine measures, he instead supported priests and sided with
conspiracy theorists calling the coronavirus a "mass psychosis."
As a result of ignoring scientific facts and opting instead for religious pseudoscience,
infection rates in Belarus have skyrocketed - surpassing Italy in a matter of weeks!
By mid-May Belarus was logging 900 new cases a day, 180 times the rate of neighboring Lithuania
- who instituted quarantine procedures as early as March 13 (and those are just the
cases we know about).
Finally, BBC Russia picked up the story of St. Elizabeth’s on April 27.
Lemeshonok lashed back, saying that every year people at the church get sick like this.
A bit ironic coming from a faith healer who just weeks earlier claimed that the church
was a place of healing not disease and that you couldn't get sick from communion.
But he stuck to his guns, claiming that temples have a special spirit of healing, and that
the first nun to contract the disease got it from a hospital anyways, not from a church.
And the Abbess, outraged at the thought of closing the church argued that, "It's impossible
for a believer to live without communion!
For then you would have neither faith nor health.
If we deprive people of the sacrament we will all die here.
It is impossible to live without God."
Nevertheless, with all of the bad press, the monastery did eventually close its doors to
outside visitors on April 28th... for two weeks, before returning to business as usual,
holding packed out services, and endangering their congregants yet again.
They learned nothing!
And so long as stories like this are swept under the rug, so long as there are no consequences
for this kind of deception and criminal negligence, and so long as it's deemed taboo to criticize
the actions of religious leaders; ignorance, pseudoscience, and abuse of power will run
rampant.
So whatever you do, don't stay silent on issues like this.
Share this video far and wide.
Now, in the next few days, I'll be looking deeper into the claim that you can't get sick
from communion and that it's perfectly safe, but I'll be exploring this question from a
scientific research and data-back approach - the topic is actually a lot more complicated
than I thought.
So check back soon for that video.
Stories like this take a lot of time and hard work to research thoroughly (in this case,
in multiple languages).
If you'd like to learn more about my workflow and research process or just support videos
like this, I just posted an exclusive behind the scenes video about that on Patreon, if
you support my work at any pledge level, then you get access to that video.
Thank you for your ongoing support, and as always, dare to be curious, but don't drink
the Koolaid!