A serious illness is the preliminary cause of death of the girl in the hospice of the Sredneuralsky nunnery in the Sverdlovsk region, held by the defrocked schema monk Sergius. This is stated in a message published on August 7 on the website of the regional department of the Investigative Committee of Russia (RF IC).
“The investigative department for the city of Verkhnyaya Pyshma of the TFR in the Sverdlovsk region is conducting a pre-investigation check on the report of the death of a 15-year-old girl on the territory of the Sredneuralsky women’s monastery. During the inspection, it was preliminarily established that the death of the child was due to a serious illness, there are no bodily injuries that would indicate the criminal nature of the death, ”the message says.
On August 6, it was reported that a 15-year-old girl who suffered from cancer had died in the hospice at the monastery. After that, the head of the Investigative Committee of Russia, Alexander Bastrykin, instructed to check the information about the death of the teenager. On this fact, the investigation opened a criminal case.
At the end of May, the diocesan authorities refused to serve Romanov, due to the fact that he urged citizens not to comply with the quarantine regime, and called the situation with the coronavirus a pseudo-pandemic.
The next month, Sergius removed the abbess of the Sredneuralsky nunnery in the Sverdlovsk region from management and gathered the Cossacks to guard the territory of the monastery.
In early July, the Yekaterinburg diocese turned to former pupils of the Sredneuralsk nunnery for help in collecting information on cases of violence against children in the monastery. At the same time, Vsevolod Moguchev called the information about violence against minors false.
On July 24, Patriarch Kirill approved the decision of the court of the Yekaterinburg diocese, which on July 3 found Schema-Abbot Sergius guilty of violating the priestly oath and ordered to defrock him.
Later, Vakhtang Kipshidze, deputy head of the Synodal Department for Church Relations with Society and the Media, said that the Russian Orthodox Church would leave the former clergyman an opportunity to repent of his actions.