I am Just a Priest

The cycle “I am just a priest” includes short but full/capacious portraits of the great spiritual personalities of modern times – of Orthodox and Catholic Churches. The heroes of the series will be not only hierarchs but also ordinary priests and lay people. Two series will show Lev, the Archbishop of Great Novgorod, Russia – the center of Christianity of the ancient Rus’ and the Catholic priest Werenfried van Straaten. The cycle is opened with the documentary about the Pope Benedict XVI.

Every time, at all times the priesthood was the basis of the Earthly Church. Today there are a lot of men in soutanes and cassocks that will be canonized one day. The Church never runs short of the righteous men. But the anti clerical society painstakingly seeking for isolated cases of sin and vices among priests creates great scandals around them. The purpose is obvious – to discredit the Church through those who bear the fullness of the Faith power.

The mission of a vast majority of hierarchs and simple parish priests, monks and missionaries, who carry the cross of Faith, is simply ignored. The priesthood does not need rehabilitation but the margin audience should know not only about the bishops – pedophiles and money-grabbers, but also about those whose prayerful heroism is omitted by mass media. Thanks to these mostly the world still keeps hope for Salvation.

Among the heroes of the proposed cycle will be brother Roger from Taise, Fr. Hans Stapel, a Franciscan monk who founded the Farms of Hope – rehabilitation centers for drug-addicts with work and prayer; Fr. Erwin Hausladen – a parish priest from Munich, fellow-student of the present Pope; the Orthodox hieromonk Roman from Russia, the famous Church hymns’ singer, now deaf-mute and several others, world-famous and not known besides their own parish or eparchy Catholic and Orthodox priests from Europe, America and Africa.