By Kostas Onisenko
The hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, expressed his outrage as the well-known social networking service Instagram blocked his account.
Speaking to RIA, the head of the Synodal Department of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations said he believed that his account was blocked due to his position in favor of vaccinations in the Church.
However, the RIA report showed that Metropolitan Hilarion had received repeated warnings from the social networking site for violating the rules of use for “publishing material that violates the law, one’s rights,” the Metropolitan said, without giving specific examples of publications for which it had received the specific warnings.
“I am very sorry because with such methods the social network reacts to the complaints of those who are against the vaccine and tries to block any alternative point of view.
But I will say my opinion regardless of that because we are talking about saving human lives,” Metropolitan Hilarion told the Russian news agency RIA, meaning that those against vaccination reported his posts on Instagram.
It is not clear whether the freezing of the Metropolitan’s account is temporary or permanent. When it was banned, his account had about 52,000 followers.
