Moscow, October 5, Interfax – Russian Orthodox Church, after the murder of two girls in the Yaroslavl Region who were victims of a rapist, suggested that such criminals should be sentenced to life imprisonment.
“I think that rapists of this kind should be subjected to life imprisonment, they should be isolated from society so that they can never commit such monstrous crimes in the future,” head of the Synodal Department for External Church Relations Metropolitan Hilarion said on air the Church and the World program on the Rossiya 24 TV channel.
However, he spoke against castrating rapists in Russia, as, for example, in one of the states of Nigeria. “I don’t think that Nigeria is a country that we need to take an example from,” the metropolitan said responding to the question. He explained that in the state where this rule was introduced, Sharia law is in force, and there is a very high level of violence.
Metropolitan Hilarion reminded that the Russian Orthodox Church does not unconditionally oppose the death penalty, leaving this issue to the state’s discretion. “In the Old Testament, for example, there was the death penalty, and even Jesus Christ did not call for the abolition of the death penalty, he was not a social reformer at all,” the hierarch said.
However, the Russian Orthodox Church, according to him, welcomes the abolition of the death penalty where possible, because the execution can not be the way of correction and should not be turned into means of vengeance.