Russian Orthodox priest rebuked over Gucci Instagram posts
A Russian Orthodox priest will be punished for his Instagram posts flaunting extravagant items from Gucci and Louis Vuitton, a senior church official has said.
Vyacheslav Baskakov posted photographs featuring luxury slippers, silverbuckled shoes and Louis Vuitton handbags and luggage worth hundreds of pounds. The photos were taken offline after they began to draw attention last week.
Church leaders have chided Baskakov for “poor taste” and said a disciplinary committee had been convened to “bring [him] to his senses”.
“I hope this will bring this shepherd to account,” said Alexander Volkov, the spokesman for the Russian Orthodox patriarch Kirill. “The life of a priest cannot be divided between the personal and public and no clergyman can act like a priest in a church from the morning until lunch and then be whoever he wants from lunch until evening.”
Kirill himself suffered a similar scandal in 2012 after he was caught in a meeting wearing a Breguet watch worth an estimated $30,000 (£24,000). His aides airbrushed the luxury timepiece out of a photograph but failed to erase the watch face’s reflection in a polished wooden table. The church apologised. Baskakov apologised on Sunday for his photographs, saying he would “suffer penance and shut down the Instagram, since I can’t behave myself humbly and appropriately”.
But he denied owning the items from Gucci and Louis Vuitton, saying he had taken most of the photographs in stores. Sometimes, he said, he sewed expensive-looking buckles on to his modest footwear.
“So they’re inexpensive shoes, but they look festive,” he wrote.