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Old cultural traditions and etiquette are hard to part with.
Kissing the hand of someone is not something reserved only for clergy in many parts of the world...children (even adult children) kissed the hands of their parents and grandparents in Greece and Turkey for instance. Men kissed the hands of ladies in Portugal and Spain, etc.
To kiss someone's hand was to show respect...

It was not an immoral act, nor technically untraditional, but I think that the president was highly embarrassed by it.

The man never even wears the honourifics of his presidential office.

Something like this only confirms to foreigners that he is a complete minion of the ROC, and I don't think that's the case at all.

Now if he was a good Orthodox, he would have kissed the hand of the first priest and the second situation would not have arisen.

Vladimir Vladimirovitch is to be congratulated on his reticence. After all, he has not yet formally been anointed and crowned as Emperor and Autocrat. When de facto become de jure, then proskynesis and hand (or foot) kissing will be the order of the day.

The priest in question was a visiting Serbian hieromonk, and in many parts of rural Serbia, hand kissing is a sign of respect.

Indeed, as I also inferred in my post above--hand kissing is traditionally a sign of respect, and a beautiful one at that. We should not look at every culture through modern Western colored glasses.


No comment.

So he is not Macedonian? Fr. Mefodii said he did it “as a sign of the small [Macedonian] people's gratitude for the great Russian people.” I guess you are right "a sign of respect."