I’ve just heard on BBC radio that a Russian doomsday cult have barricaded themselves in a cave and await the end of the world, which they believe will occur in May of next year.

The so-called “True Russian Orthodox Church” is led by a renegade priest, Pyotr Kuznetsov, who is currently in custody and undergoing psychiatric examination. His followers, who have with them a number of children as young as 18 months, have threatened to commit suicide if police use force to clear them out.

If it were not for the presence of children in the cave, this would be no more than a mildly amusing story of religious lunatics doing what religious lunatics are wont to do. I’ve lost count of how many similar cases there have been during my life. Mass suicides of adult religious believers do not overly concern me, and I look on the phenomenon as an example of group natural selection.

What’s interesting about this story is the reported reaction of the established Russian Orthodox Church. Mitropolitan Kirill – who is, I understand, a high-ranking bishop with an especially fancy hat and stick – told Russian television:

“It is obviously some kind of insanity. It is perhaps even a medical case. A very dangerous phenomena is happening in Russia’s religious life. What we’re seeing in Penza right now is a most vivid example of what could happen to a country, to a society, if this society is deprived of proper religious education.”

As they say, you really couldn’t make it up.