Russian Orthodox Church Fires Poker-Playing Archbishop

• Russian Orthodox archbishop faces trial over poker moonlighting.
• Archbishop Nestor is head of Church in Western Europe.
• Church discipline masks tensions over Ukraine war dissent.

The Russian Orthodox Church has bounced a poker-playing archbishop from his role as head of the Exarchate of Western Europe.

While the Church did not give a reason for the removal of Archbishop Nestor of Korsun from his position, independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta has learned it’s the cleric’s double life as a player on the French tournament circuit that has so displeased Patriarch Kirill, Primate of Moscow and all Rus’.

Never trust a poker player, so the saying goes, and the Patriarch believes Archbishop Nestor is up to no good, per Novaya Gazeta.

Poker Shark

Since September 2023, the archbishop has been playing live poker tournaments, mainly in Paris, under his real name, Evgeny Sirotenko, according to the Hendon Mob Database. During that time, he has made seven final tables and amassed $47,182 in gross tournament earnings by playing low-to-medium buy in tournaments.

As well as being relieved of his duties, which involve leading the Church in France, Great Britain, Belgium, Italy, Ireland, Spain, Switzerland, Portugal, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, and Monaco, Sirotenko will be subject to an ecclesiastical trial, according to a press release from the Church.

This will determine whether he should be defrocked for violating Apostolic Canon 50 of the Council of Laodicea, which prohibits clergymen from even attending places where gambling is taking place. It will also examine whether he has used Church money to fund his poker career, Novaya Gazeta claims.

Voice of Dissent

But others are wondering whether this poker thing could be a pretext to get rid of a troublesome voice of opposition to the war in Ukraine.

In April 2022, Sirotenko and Archbishop Francisco Javier Martínez published a joint declaration in opposition to the war that called for “an end to violence and barbarity and to listen in one’s conscience to the voice of God, who rejects evil.”

“He didn’t promote the Russian world,” Ksenia Luchenko, a journalist specializing in the role of the Church in Russian society and politics, wrote on Telegram of Sirotenko’s downfall.

“He didn’t bow low enough… He always sided with his priests, not the patriarchate, and stood up for them,” she said.