Page:John Feoktist Dudikoff - Beasts in Cassocks (1924).djvu/136



I, Vassily Ivanovich Ptashchuk, was well acquainted with the formerly Arch-bishop and Metropolitan Platon Rozhdestvensky and with Archbishop Alexander Nemolovsky since the year 1910. I had the occasion to become acquainted with them at the Russian Consistory, which is located at 15 East 97th Street, the East Side of the City of New York, State of New York. I was singing then in the chapel of Ivan Timofeevich Gorokhoff, who was formerly the regent of the St. Nicholas Catherdal.

I, being good and honest, believed in what I did; and was convinced to the depth of my soul that others too believed in the doings of the Russian Orthodox Church. Having been advised by the Lords of the Church that the latter is in need of funds for the education, supposedly, of faithful Russians, I was donating from time to time small sums out of my means and was also lending large sums of money having been sure and deeply convinced that all such moneys will be used for good and educational purposes. But after some time I convinced myself that all my money went into the pockets of the leaders and fathers of the Church and this money, which by the way was earned by me through hard labor, the Lords of the Church used for drinking-bouts and orgies and to complete this women-prostitutes always played there the "first fiddle." And as if in derision of one's person, of everything that is clean and holy in a human being I was being sent to certain places to get the "goods." Being naive and afraid of the anger of the Lords I incontrovertibly fulfilled their wishes. I was always present at such orgies as a dumb and blind witness. I used to think that all I saw was not in reality, but in my