A priest and Hieromonk known as Father Iason explained in a video he posted on YouTube why he defrocked himself and decided to leave his religion.

Syrakos-Ioannis Kessen, which is his secular name, said he could not stand serving a religion that had apriori judged him to go to hell for his sexual proclivity.

“After five years of wearing religious garments, there comes a time of confrontation with personal truth. Now, having left the church and organised religion in the past, I can speak and think without dogma, without doctrines, without limits. Small videos, small stones that build the truth. From the frock to feminism, from regularity to visibility,” the priest said in the video.

“I have been a priest of the Eastern Orthodox Church for over five years. Many people know me either from my physical presence because I had a church, people, functions, sermons or from the internet because I publish my texts and there is often a lively dialogue under them. I am no longer father Iason, a monk. My name is Syrakos-Ioannis Kessen. I left behind the frock, the church, threw the garments as the people say, and by doing it I left every church in the East and the West, every organised religion that has been scheming since the beginning of human history, the oppression of man by creating systems that silence bodies and mouths, clearly defining what’s right and what’s wrong. At one point I looked at myself in the mirror and said the truth was more important”.