Orthodox Priests Demand Russia Release Alexei Navalny’s Body to Family

A group of more than eight hundred Russian Orthodox priests and church members wrote a letter to Russian officials on Thursday imploring them to return the body of opposition leader Alexei Navalny to his family.

The letter said continuing to hold Navalny’s remains would be an “act of ruthlessness and inhumanity.”

“Even Pontius Pilate, who decided to execute Christ for fear of disloyalty to the emperor … did not prevent the release of the Saviour’s body and his burial. Do not be crueller [sic] than Pilate,” the letter said.

The letter described Navalny as a “man of faith, an Orthodox Christian,” and warned keeping his body from his family could cause “even more tension within society.”

Roman Catholics in Russia also mourned Navalny’s death, an unusually forthright action for a church that normally tries to avoid drawing the baleful attention of the Russian government.

A lay Catholic leader in Moscow told OSV News on Wednesday:

The Catholic church in Russia doesn’t speak out on sensitive issues — though we’ve been here for centuries, we still feel like we’re in a ghetto, keeping quiet so no one will notice us. But I really hope memorial services will be held in other countries — that even the pope might join prayers in his memory.

“Although not all Catholics agreed with everything he said and did during his short life, no one would deny his courage,” she said, adding:

Sadly, however, I can’t believe Navalny’s death will mark a turning point by provoking mass protests and changing things. Many others have died under the current regime, and their names are already barely remembered by young Russians, while hundreds of political detainees still suffer in prisons and labor camps.

The Russian bishop’s conference did not offer public comments on the “tragedy” of Navalny’s death. Lay Catholics told OSV News they were afraid to speak out more forcefully. Russian police have cracked down forcefully against memorials for Navalny in cities across the country, arresting hundreds of the mourners.

Russian officials announced Navalny’s death at the Polar Wolf prison colony in the Arctic on Friday. Navalny was arrested in January 2021 upon returning to Moscow after surviving an assassination attempt using chemical weapons and was sentenced to a string of lengthy prison terms on embezzlement charges. He was moved without warning to the harsh Polar Wolf camp in December 2023, leaving his friends and family unaware of his health or location for most of the month.

Prison officials were evasive about the cause and circumstances of his death, listing the cause as “sudden death syndrome.” When they refused to return his body to his family for burial, his allies said the government of strongman Vladimir Putin was callously forcing the family to suffer additional anguish and covering up the true cause of his death.

Navalny’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, said in a video statement that Putin probably ordered her husband killed with another dose of Novichok nerve agent and needed some time to erase the evidence:

My husband could not be broken, and that’s exactly why Putin killed him, in the most cowardly way. He did not have the courage to look him in the eye or even say his name. And now they are also cowardly, hiding his body, not showing him to his mother, not giving it to her.

Navalny’s 69-year-old mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, filed a lawsuit on Wednesday seeking to compel the authorities to hand over Alexei’s body. She said on Thursday she is resisting pressure from Russian authorities to give her son a secret burial, away from public scrutiny.

“They are blackmailing me, they are setting conditions where, when and how my son should be buried. They want to do it secretly without a mourning ceremony,” she said.

Lyudmila said a Russian investigator warned that if she does not agree to a secret funeral, the state will “do something” unpleasant with his body. She was told to make her decision quickly because “the corpse is decomposing.”

“They want to take me to the outskirts of the cemetery to a fresh grave and say: ‘Here lies your son.’ I don’t agree to this. I want you too — to whom Alexey is dear, for whom his death was a personal tragedy — to have the opportunity to say goodbye to him,” she told Navalny’s supporters.

Navalny’s mother said she was permitted to view the body in a city morgue but was not allowed to claim it for burial. She visited the morgue on Saturday, the day after Alexei’s death, but was told the morgue was not open for business, and her son’s body was not there.

Navalny’s spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh, said his mother was presented with a death certificate that said the 47-year-old dissident died of “natural causes.”