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Russian theologian Andrey Kuraev was denied entry into Georgia.

Российского богослова Андрея Кураева не пропустили на территорию Грузии.

According to Kuraev, he was not informed about the reason for the entry ban. He spent the night in a cell. He attributed the refusal to the influence of the Moscow Patriarchate and the upcoming lecture. The deacon is opposed to the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill (Gundyaev).

The lecture was scheduled to take place in Tbilisi on February 5. It was intended to focus on the history of the church in the 15th and 16th centuries, a period when, from the perspective of global Orthodoxy, the Moscow church was considered to be in schism, while the center of the Russian church de jure was in Kyiv, which belonged to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

In 2010-2011, Kuraev lived and worked in Abkhazia, which Tbilisi views as a territory occupied by Russia, while from the standpoint of church law, it is considered part of the Georgian Orthodox Church.

He gave lectures there and engaged in missionary activities. On Facebook, Kuraev noted that he does not believe the entry ban is related to his trips to Sukhumi, as he had already entered Georgia in September. He currently resides in the EU and is part of the clergy of the Exarchate of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Lithuania. The Russian Orthodox Church considers him to be defrocked.

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