Welcome to Unobscured, a production of I Heart Radio and Aaron Minky.

The spiritual touring actor Gregori Rasputin.

That's what the Moscow Gazette called him, but that was just the headline.

Things only got worse for Gregori from there.

Apparently, the writer knew all the favorite talking points from the elite salons.

He was a cunning Siberian charlatan, a predatory ledger, a hypnotist, and a false teacher who

used his ideas about holy love to get far too up close and personal with his followers.

They called him a pseudo-profit, and damned him for teaching spiritual delusions that

were opposite of the traditions of the Orthodox Church.

But the article didn't stop at condemning Rasputin's delusions and false holiness.

It also attacked other areas of his life.

It accused Gregori of being a lazy deadbeat, a man who had abandoned his family in Pekrovskog,

whose children were fatherless and unruly.

And the author even said that in investigating his piece, he had spoken with a church leader

who called Gregori a heretic and a sexual predator.

As far as the press goes, this was about as damning as it gets, and digging behind the

article we can see why.

Like so many others in Russia, the journalist who wrote the piece believed that the church

was in trouble and needed to be reformed.

Like Archimandrite Fiofan, the writer looked to Russia's wandering holy men as a source

of hope.

In some ways, Gregori seemed like exactly the kind of person he was looking for, a peasant

...