A court in the former Soviet republic of Georgia has ordered the arrest of a renegade Orthodox priest whose hundreds of followers have terrorized Baptists, Pentecostals and Jehovah’s Witnesses for nearly four years.
Some minority religious leaders welcomed the June 21 news, saying it sends an important message throughout the mostly Orthodox Christian country of 5 million people.
The influential priest, Father Basili Mkalavishvili, is on the run, refusing to obey either an initial June 4 court order or a higher court’s June 10 decision upholding the ruling. His lawyer said that Mkalabishvili phones regularly and has no intention of surrendering.
The lawyer, Kartlos Garibashvili, added the Mkalavishvili is innocent of the charges that he led a mob into a warehouse and burned tons of Baptist religious literature in February 2001. “You need to understand that a priest simply is not capable of doing this sort of thing,” Garibashvili said.
The leader of Georgia’s 15,000 Baptists, Bishop Malkhaz Songulashvili, is taking little heart in the court’s decision.
“I do not think the recent developments represent a significant change in the government’s willingness to defend religious freedom,” Songulashvili commented in an email exchange.
He added that a “Strong political will to change the situation is still missing.”
Georgia, an impoverished nation located between Turkey and Russia, is heavily dependent on the West for economic and political support.
Mkalavishili, who has an estimated 10,000 followers, objects to foreign influence and non-Orthodox faiths in the territory of Georgia, a Christian mation for more than 1,500 years.
(RNS)
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