Moldova’s powerful Orthodox Church has warned the country’s government against using a potential vaccine against Covid-19 on the population, claiming that a “global anti-Christ system” plans to take remote control of people via 5G technology.

The Church said it felt great concern about “technology allowing people to be micro-chipped through a vaccine that would insert nanoparticles that interact with 5G waves into their bodies and allow people to be remotely controlled.” It delivered the warning in a statement to parliament, President Igor Dodon and Prime Minister Ion Chicu.

The statement repeated claims made by far-right groups in Europe and groups in Russia that 5G technology may have been responsible for the Covid-19 outbreak – and that Microsoft boss Bill Gates intended to profit from it by developing a vaccine that enables Microsoft to control people. Moldovan journalist Madalin Necsutu told The Tablet that the Church was “trying to kill two birds with one stone” with its intervention. One was to strike “a general conservative tone, fighting ‘Western liberal values’ and in this regard, a vaccine,” whole the other “was about internal politics – to divert public attention from a recent leaked video showing the President allegedly taking a bribe from a fugitive oligarch.”

He added: “The Church is a close ally of President Igor Do-don and acts as his election agent in the presidential elections.”