The Night Wolves, Russia’s largest and best-known motorcyclists’ club, has expelled a member for giving a topless woman a ride on his motorcycle, which was decorated with a religious pendant, Regions.ru news agency reports. “He has repented,” Night Wolves press secretary Alexey Vaits told the agency, “and he says this will be a lesson for him for the future about how to treat holy objects.”
The Icon of Christ Not Made by Hands, which adorned the motorcycle, is a well-known image in the Russian Orthodox Church.
“The girl was standing on Nakhimovsky Square [in Sevastopol, Ukraine],” a witness to the incident stated, “and I didn’t even think she was naked, she had such dense body art, depicting a wolf.”
Club officials were not swayed, however. “The person who placed the Icon of Christ Not Made by Hands on his motorcycle bears responsibility for the holy object, because it is an expression of our ideal, our path, which is what Christ is for us. It is immediately obvious that the enemy of humanity will act through that,” Vaits said. Photographs of the topless girl on the motorcycle, with the icon visible, have appeared on the Internet.
Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill recently gave a blessing to the motorcycle club. Last week, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin visited the club’s Moscow headquarters and gave the club a Russian flag, which members took with them to their international bike show in Sevastopol. The show was timed to coincide with the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Sevastopol from German occupation.
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