Q: In the New Year we tend to look both forwards and backwards. Can you tell us what regrets you have about the past? And what hopes do you have for the future?
A: I have three regrets, but a hope that far outweighs them all!
My first regret is the killing off of the Western European Archdiocese of ROCOR. We always used to concelebrate with everyone, with Constantinople, with the Serbs etc. We also had parishes on the new calendar with us. There was no problem with any of this and we were pleased to live like this. This was our tradition of being on good terms with all the Local Churches, faithfully handed down to us without change from pre-Revolutionary Russia. It used to be the norm for the whole Russian Church.
However, the ever-memorable Archbishop Antony of Geneva, who ordained me and whose spiritual child I am, was attacked by sectarians from the USA for keeping to this tradition, just as his predecessor, Archbishop John (Maximovich), was suspended and put on trial by those very same CIA-financed sectarians in the USA. There are narrow and racist, politically-minded pharisees, who cannot tolerate openness to other nationalities, unlike St John and his successor.
In 2007 we finally defeated the US fanatics, we ‘drained the swamp’, as they say, and brought ROCOR back into canonical communion with the rest of the Russian Church. However, ten years later, the CIA, working hard through its Cold War-founded select but powerful network of clerical agents in New York and elsewhere – their names are well-known to us, for many of them were recruited long ago – subverted our victory. They did this by having collected ‘dirt’ on individuals (they especially like to recruit homosexuals, who are then compromised and in debt to them), for, as they like to say, ‘every man has his price’, often literally. In this way they infiltrated the Church and created what they had long wanted – sectarianism and schism.
I realise that the New York group was desperate to find bishops, but there is a minimum level. They should exclude CIA agents by thoroughly vetting and training candidates for the episcopate in seminary and monastery, and also exclude homosexuals, narcissists and money grubbers, before they consecrate anyone. The liturgical, historical and legal ignorance of the CIA generation of recruits should not be such that they get arrested twice in one day in two different countries! Candidates should also understand the canons, especially those of the First and Second Council under St Photios. And they should also be equipped linguistically, which is so important in Europe. Communication by google translate has made a laughing-stock of that jurisdiction.
Then came the shock of 2017, a very recent convert, knowing little apart from American culture, which he tried to impose on everyone together with his American language. This was teaching your grandmother to suck eggs. Lacking all respect for local traditions, the new convert made nasty racist attacks on all Orthodox nationalities, Russians, Ukrainians, Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbs, Romanians and Moldovans, demanded ever more money at every stop, persecuted the faithful, tried to close our churches, flew off into hateful rages, insisted on ‘protocols’ and micromanaged bureaucracy, and set himself up as a guru, just like the invaders of Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan had done before him. ‘I’m American, I know everything and you owe me complete obedience’. That was the attitude. There is nothing Christian in any of this, just neophyte arrogance.
In December 2020 he went into schism. That was the last straw for all of us. Despite his guru claims, he was not followed. Clergy in Western Europe ignored him and continue to concelebrate with others, including with the Moscow Patriarchate, from which he had also gone into schism. But for us who have always fought against sectarianism, this was the end. We will ever uphold the traditions of St John of Shanghai and Western Europe and of his successor Archbishop Antony of Geneva, who would have supported us. We will never, on principle, support schism and sectarianism. As St John Chrysostom said: ‘The sin of schism cannot be washed away even by the blood of martyrdom’. We pray for him that he will repent before the end.
My second regret is that so much time has been wasted by others. I have been held back. I could have done so much more, but was not allowed to, for reasons of racism, jealousy and politics. I hope I have a long life because there is so much more to do towards building the Local Church of Western Europe. Thirty-six hours a day would not be enough. Parishioners are praying for me that I live to 100. They want me to baptise their grandchildren. Of course, maybe I won’t live until next week, I don’t choose. As God wills.
My third regret is that the Moscow Church administration, with all its vast potential, fell into exactly the same nationalist and racist trap as the Greek Church administration. It began to exclude Non-Russians, not just Ukrainians, but even their own children, from their once multinational Church, despite the warnings of my dear friend, the late Fr Vsevolod Chaplin, who died in mysterious circumstances in Moscow in 2020, aged just 52. This ‘Russian world’ concept is exactly the same racism as Hellenist nationalism. They have lost everyone outside themselves, Ukrainians, Moldovans, those from the Baltics, those from Western Europe, isolating themselves from the mainstream, just like the Greeks.
As a result, the responsibility for building the Local Church of Western Europe has fallen to the Romanians, together with the old calendar, Russian-speaking Moldovans and those of other nationalities, including canonical Russians, who are likeminded, like ourselves. Will we manage to do it, overcoming nationalism, keeping our hundreds of thousands of Western European-born Romanian and Moldovan children in the Church through a new Local Church? We shall do our best to do so.
And this is my great hope, far greater than all these details of history, that I shall live to see our Local Church emerge from the hundreds of thousands of Orthodox children, not just Romanian and Moldovan, but those of many other Eastern European nationalities and of those whose ancestors have lived in Western Europe for generations and centuries, including our own six children, six sons and daughters-in-law, and twelve grandchildren so far.
Thus, we hold firmly to the tradition of the Western European diocese of ROCOR, of the pre-Revolutionary Russian Church. Nothing will be lost. This year we have an important project towards this. It is all under way and hopefully it will be completed and revealed before the end of 2025. Unity, not sectarian schism, is the way forward and that is our way and always has been!
Thank God for the Romanian Church. Through our Church we have been able to keep Russians and Ukrainians together (only a few nationalistic and ritualistic Muscovites did not stay with us), just before their conflict hotted up on 24 February 2022, not to mention Moldovans, Romanians and others. I know that we are very grateful to Metr Joseph and he is grateful to us, as he wants to build a multinational Church. In a few days’ time our new Archbishop Athanasy, a Russian-speaking Moldovan, will be enthroned for us. Glory to God!