On January 7 The New York Times reported that Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, head of the Department of Church and Society of the Moscow Patriarchate and one of the highest officials in the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church, said in a radio interview that the ROC should serve as a mediator between the state and the people. Two days earlier Aleksei Navalny, an opposition leader, had called for just such a role by the Church: “I would very much like for the Russian Orthodox Church to take up such a...