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Senior Russian MP outraged by Charlie Hebdo’s cartoon over Orthodox center in Paris

Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons have repeatedly triggered major scandals and even terrorist attacks

Russian Orthodox Spiritual and Cultural Center in Paris AP Photo/Christophe Ena

Russian Orthodox Spiritual and Cultural Center in Paris

© AP Photo/Christophe Ena

MOSCOW, October 20. /TASS/. A senior Russian parliamentarian has expressed outrage at a cartoon of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo over the unveiling of the Russian Orthodox Spiritual and Cultural Center in Paris.

"It is an absolutely blasphemous and rude escapade. I am sure it will be condemned by the Russian Orthodox Church," Leonid Slutsky, the chairman of the State Duma international affairs committee, told reporters.

Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons have repeatedly triggered major scandals and even terrorist attacks, he said, referring to events of January 7, 2015, when radicals attacked the editorial board of Charlie Hebdo, killing 12 and wounding another 11 people.

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"This is yet another provocation that strongly hurts the feelings of the believers, this time in the Orthodox world. Any church is a holy place. Cartoons using holy images as impermissible, outrageous and insulting for any person seeing himself or herself as part of the Russian world," the senior parliamentarian said.

The Russian Orthodox Spiritual and Cultural center in Paris held its inaugural opening on Wednesday.

The center, which was under construction since 2014, was built on the Branly embankment, in the historic center of the French capital.

The opening was attended by Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo, as well as Russia’s Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky and representatives of the Moscow Patriarchate. The complex consists of a French-Russian elementary school, a bookstore, a cultural center, exhibition facilities, a coffee shop, and the highlight - the Holy Trinity Cathedral.

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