Sviatogorsk Lavra refutes disinformation of journalists about Metropolitan Arseniy

Unsubstantiated accusations or "pre-Easter media madness for 30 pieces of silver" – so was called in the Sviatogorsk Lavra the statement about the allegedly found "certificate in the name of the colonel of the FSB Yakovenko", owned by the governor of the Holy Dormition Sviatogorsk Lavra, Metropolitan Arseniy.

"In the pursuit of sensation, many unscrupulous media workers allow themselves to overstep not only the norms of journalistic ethics, conscience and morality, but even the limits of decency and common sense," the press service stresses.

Lavra officials explain that the false page of the priest of the Russian Orthodox Church, hegumen Theophan Lukianov, was used to spread the pseudo-sensation. He said: "I, hegumen Theophan (Nikolai Lukyanov), did not post any message on the "VKontakte" about any Yakovenko. In general, I do not use this social network in principle, nor any other social network. Yesterday I created a VKontakte page just to write a complaint to the moderators asking them to remove this nonsense."

In the Sviatogorsk monastery, an "ID" was analyzed and reported that it was roughly faked with the help of a photoshop: a photo of Metropolitan Arseniy was mounted on the lost identity card of FSB officer Sergei Prozorov, which was posted on the Internet. A detailed and scrupulous explanation of how a counterfeit was made can be read in the statement by the Lavra.

As for the fake repost on the Facebook, the reaction of the moderators was as follows: "We checked the repost to which you complained for the prosecution. As it violated our Community Standards, we deleted it. Thank you for your report".