Russian Bishop Accepts $106K SUV, Uses Jesus to Defend It

'Jesus Christ Himself wore expensive clothes gifted to him'
By Polly Davis Doig,  Newser Staff
Posted May 24, 2017 12:30 PM CDT
Bishop: Jesus Also Would Have Taken the Wheel of Free SUV
A 2016 Toyota Land Cruiser, apparently acceptable for the son of God.   (Toyota via AP)

A Russian Orthodox bishop is tooling around in a new Land Cruiser he was given, and he's got kind of a unique defense against critics who say he shouldn't have accepted the $106,000 gift: Per a rep from Bishop Nektary's archdiocese in Oryol: "Jesus Christ Himself wore expensive clothes gifted to him, shall we say, by people who celebrated Him." The SUV comes courtesy of a local agribusiness, reports the Moscow Times, which it seems was deeply thankful that Nektary, aka Nikolai Seleznev, visited "the most remote villages at any time of the year in any kind of weather," per the archdiocese. The Times notes that Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill in 2012 urged his clergy to think over such lavish gifts "20 times" before deciding to accept. (More Russian Orthodox Church stories.)

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