New York, August 22, 2022
slavonic.org
Alexander Belya, a defrocked former archimandrite, can move ahead with his libel suit against the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia and several of its prominent figures, a federal appeals court ruled on Wednesday.
“Simply having a religious association on one side of the ‘v’ does not automatically mean a district court must dismiss the case or limit discovery,” three judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit said in their ruling, reports the Washington Times.
The defendants, among whom was the recently departed Metropolitan Hilarion, the First Hierarch of ROCOR, argued that Belya’s suit violates the “ministerial exception,” which blocks courts from settling disputes involving Church employment of ministers, and the “church-autonomy doctrine,” which prevents courts from ruling on Church operations.
As the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which has taken up ROCOR’s defense, explains in its appeal, Belya’s case focuses on an internal ROCOR document that contested his supposed election as Bishop of Miami and called for his investigation on a number of serious charges, which he argues constitutes defamation.
Recall that in the summer of 2019, Belya sent a forged document to Moscow in hopes of becoming a bishop. He was then suspended and came under investigation on a number of charges. However, he refused to obey the ROCOR authorities and instead fled to the Greek Archdiocese and created the Slavic Vicariate. He was canonically defrocked by the ROCOR Holy Synod soon thereafter.
As OrthoChristian reported last month, 14 states from across the nation have filed an amicus brief calling for Belya’s case to be dismissed, citing its serious threat to religious freedom.
However, Belya’s attorneys at Americans United for Separation of Church and State argued that the aforementioned doctrines “usually apply in employment discrimination cases,” not defamation.
“Neither Father Belya nor anyone else should be forced to tolerate public defamation and the destruction of their reputation by a religious organization with no legal recourse. There must be equal justice under law,” commented Americans United President Rachel Laser.
In a related scandal, Archbishop Elpidophoros of GOARCH was forced to cancel his plans to consecrate Belya as a bishop after the hierarchs of the other jurisdictions in America made it clear that they would leave the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops rather than work with Belya.
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