Russian priests mull guns to fight crime wave

By Dmitry Solovyov

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Police in a central Russian region have advised priests to apply for firearms licences so they can defend their churches from marauding thieves who have been stealing religious icons at gunpoint.

But a cleric with the Russian Orthodox diocese of Kostroma said the guns would probably be wielded by church wardens because the biblical commandment -- Thou shalt not kill -- prohibited priests themselves from bearing arms.

Local police issued the advice after a spate of attacks in which thieves, often armed with submachine guns and travelling in off-road vehicles, stole icons from hard-to-reach rural churches and vanished long before police arrived.

At least one priest was killed by robbers in the Ural Mountains region and another was shot at when he confronted thieves during a raid on his church.

The stolen icons can be worth thousands of dollars and are often sold on the black market or smuggled abroad where they go on sale in antique shops, church officials said.

"The police are recommending to priests that they should apply, as private individuals, to the Interior Ministry's offices and request a licence to own firearms for self-defence," regional police spokeswoman Yelena Kirshanova told Reuters.

"These (thieves) are organised criminal groups," she said by telephone from Kostroma, some 320 km (200 miles) northeast of Moscow.

Father Andrei Kazarin, Secretary of the Orthodox Church's Kostroma diocese, said priests faced being defrocked if they violating the commandment not to kill.