A religious leader for Russia's Old Believers has called on Russian men to stop shaving to “protect themselves from homosexuality.”

Metropolitan Kornily, Primate of the Russian Orthodox Old Believer Church (RPSC), said that men with beards were less likely “corrupted” by same-sex relationships.

"God set down certain rules. The Lord created everyone with a beard. No man can resist his creator,” Kornily told Russia's National News Service. "It's made a monstrous thing to see men's clothing and hairstyles changing."

Metropolitan Kornily also lamented that the beard's special status had "completely disappeared from the Catholic West."

