Hundreds of people came on Sunday to a southern...

Priest Daniil Sysoyev, 34, who criticized Islam, was shot dead in his St. Thomas church by a masked gunman Thursday evening. His choirmaster was injured in the attack. Investigators said Friday their main theory is that religious hatred was behind the crime.

Sysoyev, who was married with three children, was known for his missionary work among Muslim immigrants, and had received numerous death threats. He was known to have converted more than 80 Muslims to Christianity over the past two years.

The gunman entered the church, asked for Sysoyev, and when the priest said he was Sysoyev, shot him, according to chief Moscow investigator Anatoly Bagmet.

"Any murder is a grave sin. But the murder of a priest in a church is also a challenge to the law of God," Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia said Friday.

"This sin will not be left unrevenged by God," the head of the Russian Orthodox Church said.

Among those who came to bid farewell to Father Daniil

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