Marketing and advertising strategies have transformed immensely in the last few years and people are making some lucrative careers out of the opportunities they are getting. These days one can earn handsome money just by posting photos of designer clothes and accessories on Instagram. But if a priest does that, it becomes a topic to talk about. may be tricky, as one Russian cleric found out.
A Russian priest has been going viral on the internet for handling an Instagram account attributed to images of expensive luxury items, including shoes, slippers, luggage bags and accessories. The author apparently had a soft spot for Louis Vuitton, although Gucci was a favorite too.
The photos were old, but last week it caught the attention after Russian online platform Pikabu posted about it. “This is the clergy we get,” said the headline of the post, and many commenters agreed, saying the man bragging about his posh lifestyle hardly qualifies to be a spiritual guide.
Some believe that the account is too outrageous to be genuine. They suggested it must be some anti-clerical project meant to satirize priests that think too much about body and too little about the soul.
After coming to know this, the Instagram poster soon deleted the page. But people had identified him as Vyacheslav Baskakov, an actual archpriest from Tver. Baskakov published an open letter, acknowledging that he was behind the inappropriate Instagram account and asking forgiveness for his sin.
He claims most of the brand items in the photos did not belong to him and were clicked in shops.
“No priest can afford such things. And why would he? Now I consider those photos stupid, childish and even sinful,”
he wrote.
Talking about the shoes, Baskakov shares that they are counterfeit.
“I fixed buckles on almost all of them myself. Those shoes are cheap, but they look festive. I wanted some festivity in my clothes to cheer up after services,”
the priest said.
This isn’t the first time that a Russian Orthodox Church official has been caught with high-end fashion accessories. In 2012, Patriarch Kirill was spotted wearing a $30,000 Breguet wrist watch in a photo posted on the church’s website. After a wave of outrage, a photo appeared with the wristwatch photoshopped out.
