Bright Tuesday 22 April 2025
Part One: The Orthodox World and Inter-Orthodox Relations
How would you characterise the situation of the Orthodox world and of inter-Orthodox relations today? What are the main forces and factors influencing this situation?
In the fifty years that I have been a conscious Orthodox, I have never known such a situation. The Schism, indeed multiple schisms, between Local Orthodox Churches today are unprecedented. This is a crisis.
As you know this crisis began with the action of the Patriarch of Constantinople, whose Patriarchate received $20 million from the CIA to set up a fake nationalist Church in Kiev, composed of gangsters and murderers. (In reality he only got $15 million, as $5 million ‘disappeared’ in Kiev. Someone has to pay for the villas and the Bentleys….).
The West has used either naïve or else mercenary Ukrainians, exploiting their sense of entitlement, for its purpose, which is to destroy Russia, so it can then plunder its resources, which it has valued at nearly $100 trillion. (The Ukraine itself is irrelevant to these Western war criminals). Setting up a fake Church and using Nazis in the Ukraine were merely parts of the Western operation to weaken, destroy and then dismember Russia. It convinced nobody and failed utterly.
We see then a new ‘Cold War’, though that expression was always absurd. Both the first Cold War and this Second Cold War have been hot wars, which have left millions dead. After its rout in Vietnam, the US decided that Americans should no longer die to expand their Empire, that others should die for it, Afghans in Afghanistan, Iraqis in Iraq, Ukrainians in the Ukraine, ‘until the last Ukrainian’, as the West proclaims.
However, I remind you that the word ‘crisis’ means in Greek ‘judgement’. And this war is the Judgement of God on all concerned, on Orthodox and Non-Orthodox alike, not least the Judgement of God on Ukrainians and Russians. This is the Judgement of those who bear the Orthodox Christian Spirit, dukhonostsy, and those who fight against the Orthodox Christian Spirit, dukhobortsy. Which side are we on? That is what we must ask ourselves.
What are the fundamental positive and negative tendencies in the Orthodox world and in inter-Orthodox relations?
A Schism means that there is no communion between two parts. Negative tendencies are among those who create schisms. Thus, the only positive tendencies are among those who are trying to restore communion, despite the nationalist politicians, money-lovers and ‘Orthodox’ chauvinists, who caused these schisms. And I remind you that there are multiple schisms, although that may not be clear to all in Moscow.
Once Constantinople started in the Ukraine and Moscow broke off communion with it, other Greek chauvinists in Alexandria, Greece and Cyprus, who put their Hellenism above Christ, followed. Then Moscow moved into Alexandria’s canonical territory in Africa, apparently in revenge. There followed another schism and the Non-Greek and Non-Russian Local Churches began to lose sympathy for Moscow, which they began to see as no better than the Greeks, for it too had begun to operate on someone else’s canonical territory.
Then Moscow, through its Soviet centralisation and chauvinism, lost the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which now has over 100 of its own churches in Western Europe, outside the jurisdiction of Moscow. In Moldova there are now also over 200 parishes which have transferred from the Moscow Church there to the Romanian Church. Not a single one is going the other way and others are leaving Moscow every month. Will Moldova declare that it is autocephalous and set up its own jurisdiction in Western Europe, taking its many clergy and parishes there from Moscow? What exactly is this self-destructive streak in the Russian Church, which centralises and then attacks those who object to centralisation in search of freedom and the right to use their own language?
Then Orthodox in Latvia broke away from Moscow with a self-declared autocephaly, Estonia may follow, some in Lithuania have already left. And many liberal clergy and parishes in Western Europe and several liberal pastors inside Russia, like Fr Alexei Uminsky, have left Moscow because of what they see as Patriarchal support for the conflict in the Ukraine. His case sparked a huge scandal and reached the mainstream Western media. How, they asked, did the Persecuted Church of Russia become the Persecuting Church?
Fr Alexei has been well-known for years as a liberal, a charming but very naïve man, in the style of the former Bishop Basil (Osborne). We may not agree with liberals and their anti-patriotic streak, but he was an excellent pastor, sincere and kind, and he received the support of well over 14,000 Orthodox, who were opposed to his defrocking. And yet he was defrocked. Which is the canon that states that a good and loving priest can be defrocked because his political opinions differ from those of his bishop? Then Fr Alexis’ place was taken by an aggressive and militant maximalist, of whom it is asked: Where is the love in his words? Why do Church authorities persecute good pastors? We have received no answer to this question.
However, it is not only the pro-Western liberals who have opposed Moscow, the very conservative bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) have also publicly called on Russia to withdraw its troops from the Ukraine. And yet they have not been defrocked, even though on top of this they fell into schism from Moscow’s Western European Archdiocese and into the heresy of rebaptism, persecuting those who uphold Moscow’s viewpoint.
We are reminded that the CIA has great influence and also recruits in ROCOR and that eighty-three years ago ROCOR bishops supported Hitler and his Russian Fascist Vlasovtsy troops. Moscow appears to have no objection to this anti-Russian position of the highly Americanised ROCOR, which seems to have completely forgotten its Russian and Orthodox origins, despite its name. But inside Russia, it is different….
The falling away of the same New York-run ROCOR into the heresy of rebaptism, rebaptising Orthodox who want to go to its churches, despite the Creed which proclaims that ‘I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins’, and this, apparently, with the full support of Moscow, is serious. Yet ROCOR has since 2017 increasingly become just another American convert sect with cult followers, like other old calendarist sects. It has no knowledge of the real European Orthodoxy and it has become a type of Uniatism, a closely imitated Orthodox rite, but without the inward Orthodox and Christian spirit.
In all this I am reminded of a story from the life of President Putin. At the end of 1989 he was stationed in Dresden in East Germany and that country was breaking up around him. So they phoned Moscow: ‘What shall we do? What must we say?’. And there was no answer. ‘Moscow is silent’. Those words really marked him. But today Moscow is still silent, though this time Moscow means the Moscow Patriarchate, the administration of the Russian Orthodox Church. Moscow is in denial.
Since the refusal of Moscow to deal with the unresolved ROCOR schism and then heresy (unresolved schisms always turn into heresies, look at the Roman Catholics), over thirty churches, 10% of the whole, have already left ROCOR for the Patriarchates of Constantinople or Bucharest. The former has set up a whole vicariate for them in the USA and a whole group with several churches and 15 clergy left for Bucharest in England. The fact is that the Russian Church is beginning to collapse outside the borders of the Russian Federation and Belarus. Why? Because it appears to have no adherence to the catholicity and canonicity of the Church. Moscow is silent.
Here is the fruit of Moscow’s breaking of communion. The Moscow jurisdiction is itself breaking apart. Unity is the most important thing in Church life, but it can only exist where there is love. Now chauvinism is hatred. Little wonder that in view of all this, heterodox, and not only Roman Catholics, say that the Orthodox Church no longer exists, it is broken into warring pieces, it has no catholicity. Moscow is silent.
Do you think that practical unity between the Local Orthodox Churches can be restored? What must happen for this unity to reappear? Could there be some kind of Amman format meeting?
Of course, the restoration of unity is possible, everything is possible. But it will need repentance. You may say that Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople is too proud to repent, as he started it all. But there are two groups in Constantinople, that around the present Patriarch and the other, who quite openly declare that their Patriarch is mistaken. I think one of these will be the next Patriarch. The present one is very old and it is clear to all that he blundered in the Ukraine under financial pressure from the Americans, then governed by Trump who gave the Ukrainians military training and weapons, but who has now changed his tune in view of the Russian victory over the US-run NATO in its proxy war in the Ukraine.
However, there is also the schism between Moscow and Alexandria. There must be a solution here too. Moscow lost so much sympathy in the Orthodox world by entering into Africa, Alexandria’s canonical territory.
I think that after the Special Military Operation (SMO) is over in the Ukraine, there must be a Council of all 16 Autocephalous Local Churches. It is the Catholicity of the Church that has been under threat, ever since both Constantinople and Moscow insisted on centralisation. Both want unity, but Orthodox, unlike Roman Catholics, want unity in diversity, on the model of the Holy Trinity. And the word for Council is basically the same as the word for Catholicity in Slav languages. Constantinople and Moscow should not impose some Roman Catholic type of unity, that is, centralisation and rejection of Non-Greeks and Non-Russians.
Which hierarchs, theologians and others are working for the destruction of or, conversely, for the building up of Orthodox unity?
All who work in the Name of Power, Money and Outward Splendour, instead of in the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, work for the destruction of Orthodox unity. The latter are the prophetic voices, those of Patriarch Porphyry of Serbia, of the Patriarchs Daniel of Bucharest and Sofia, of the late Archbishop Anastasy of Albania, and of all the others, in Poland, Georgia and Jerusalem. But all are waiting for peace in the Ukraine first. Nothing can be done until then, when a host of decisions will be taken, after the present paralysis is over.
- The Russian Orthodox Church. The Ukrainian Question.
What successes do you think that the Russian Orthodox Church has in external affairs, Church diplomacy, its foreign missions etc?
Here there are no successes, only catastrophic failures. Even its embraces with the Pope of Rome discredit the Russian Church. Why do you want to embrace the leader of a Church of so many homosexual and pedophile clergy, whom ordinary Catholics cannot stand? Orthodox and Catholics begin to think that the Orthodox who embrace Catholic clergy must themselves be homosexuals and pedophiles. Birds of a feather flock together, as they say.
One very young, very inexperienced, very racist and very arrogant Moscow Metropolitan said a few years ago, when he learned that masses of Non-Russians were leaving Moscow: ‘Too bad for them’. He did not see that in fact it is too bad for the Moscow Patriarchate, which is the loser, and so much the better for those who leave it. In such a situation, the Russian Orthodox Church should be renamed ‘The Russian Nationalist Church’. Perhaps he would agree to that? Catastrophic failures, indeed.
Only 20 years ago, the Orthodox world was praising the Russian Church, the Church of the New Martyrs and Confessors, the bastion and hope of Orthodoxy. In 2003, His Holiness Patriarch Alexiy II, whom I knew, wanted to found a Local Western European Orthodox Church. And now all is lost! Moscow is losing its Diaspora, of which at least half, if not three-quarters, is made up of Ukrainians and Moldovans, whom Moscow has continually treated as second-class citizens. Last year Metr Vladimir of Moldova himself wrote publicly about this ill treatment to Patriarch Kyrill. We, who are at the grassroots, have seen concrete examples of this racism and hatred towards Non-Russians every week over the last fifty years. Non-Russians have gradually been chased out of the Russian Nationalist Church.
As a result, the numbers attending Russian chapels and communities in this country, outside the Cathedral in London., are of the order of 10, 20 or 30 people. The numbers are tiny. Conversely, Greek and Romanian churches get hundreds, up to a thousand every Sunday. The Russian Church is dying out. For example, in our Romanian parish we have to give communion from three or four chalices every Sunday to those who have had confession.
I was brought up in the old Russian emigration. Metr Antony of Sourozh, who tonsured me reader in 1981, the St Seraphim-like Archbishop George (Tarasov) in Paris, who had been a pilot on the Western Front in the First World War, Archbishop Antony of Geneva, the successor of St John of Shanghai, and who ordained me priest nearly 35 years ago, and above all the greatest Russian emigre of them all, Vladyka John of Shanghai, the saint, born in what is now the Ukraine, would be horrified by what is happening now. I spent my life working for the unity of the Russian Church; now the young and inexperienced, younger than our children, have been allowed to destroy that unity. Why? Who are these Young Turks who create schisms, sects and heresies?
What would you say are the strengths and the weaknesses of the Russian Church as regards its external activities and in inter-Orthodox relations?
I can see no strengths at all, as it has quite isolated itself from the Orthodox mainstream and at present shows no humility or desire to return to the mainstream.
The weaknesses of the Russian Church are eight in number, as follows:
Centralisation, militarisation, nationalisation, bureaucratisation, oligarchisation of the episcopate (corruption). From here you have a great many cases of careerism, ecumenism, episcopal homosexualisation.
It is all politics instead of pastors, protocols instead of the Gospel of Christ, chauvinist hatred instead of Love. Ask any Ukrainian from Kiev. Ask any Moldovan. Ask any Orthodox in Western Europe.
What could reinforce the positions and authority of the Russian Church?
The restoration, not reinforcement (it is too late for that), of the authority and positions of the Russian Church can only come through repentance and missionary work. The latter can only be successful if it accepts Non-Russians as they are. Otherwise, the Russian Church will die out here, just as the first and second waves of the Russian emigration died out here. You cannot Russify what is not Russian, though you can make it Orthodox. To do missionary work means to decentralise and grant autocephaly to the missions, once they are large enough to stand on their own two feet.
To my mind, the Church of the Ukraine (that is, the Church inside the new borders of the new Ukrainian State, whatever they will be and whatever it will be called) should receive autocephaly, as should Orthodox in Moldova and in the four Baltic States of Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Lithuania. These three should at once receive autocephaly. Otherwise, the Orthodox in those countries will go on splitting into different groups in disunity. It is still not too late to recover Church unity in the Ukraine, Moldova and Estonia in particular. Moscow centralisation only kills unity, as we can see everywhere in the Diaspora.
I have to mention here that the quality of the Russian bishops sent from Russia to Western Europe has been disastrous, apart from the one exception of Metr Nestor, who is excellent. There has been one scandal after another, though I will not go into details here. You cannot hide or censor scandals in the open, internet societies of Western Europe. For example, in London there lives Maxim, the ex-bishop who was defrocked for running a drugs factory with his boyfriend in Saint Petersburg. He was already notorious for his depravity when he was a priest in London, so they sent him back to Russia, where they made him a bishop, along with the two Ignatys! It is all so sad.
And in ROCOR it is no better, we have seen them all pass by here, one an anthroposophist, another a fanatic, one an alcoholic, another a homosexual parading with his boyfriend and his narcissistic rages and alcohol, another CIA…God save us all!
How is the Russian Church perceived in the Western world today?
After all the above and then after the Budapest scandal, how do you think the Russian Church is perceived? It has totally discredited itself and is seen as hypocritical. How can the Russian Church be against the LGBT brigade, when it has so many homosexuals? If a priest were homosexual, he would be defrocked, but not a bishop. Strange. It is so sad, when 15-20 years ago the Russian Church was riding high on zeal for the New Martyrs and Confessors, and everything was still possible.
What for you would be the best outcome of the Ukrainian Church problem?
Let us be frank. The Soviet Ukraine, exactly like ‘Europe’ or the UK, is an artificial construct, created for purely ideological reasons. The Ukraine must be broken down into its component parts. It was constructed by three atheist dictators, Lenin who in 1922 gave Novorossija to the Ukraine from Russia, Stalin who between 1939 and 1945 grabbed land from Poland, Hungary and Romania, and then Khrushchov, who in 1954 gave Russian Crimea away to Kiev. It is strange to see how the West, supposedly the advocate of self-determination, freedom and democracy (!), so ardently supports the oppression and injustices of these three Communist dictators! Kiev oppresses all its minorities, some 40% or more of the population, and the West supports that oppression. But then the West is just as atheistic as the Communist dictators, so I suppose it is normal. Atheists everywhere have the same values, whether Communists or Capitalists. They are all oligarchs.
It seems to me that North Bukovina (Chernivtsy) should be returned to Romania, so-called ‘Zakarpat’e’ (Subcarpathian Rus) to Hungary and the two and a half Greek Catholic provinces next to the Polish border (‘U-krajina’) of Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk and the western half of Ternopol should be returned to Poland (or else they should become an independent Galician State and be closed off by barbed wire from the Orthodox world). Novorossija should be returned to Russia, leaving the ten and a half provinces of Kiyivska Rus, Kievan Rus, to be independent and sovereign. All that would have to be confirmed by self-determination, by referenda, after the full liberation of the Ukraine from the Neo-Nazi Banderists in Kiev and Galicia. Then the canonical Church in the new Kievan Rus State should be given autocephaly by Moscow. Will any of this actually happen? God will decide.
What could change in the Orthodox world after the end of the SMO in the Ukraine?
I think Patriarch Bartholomew will retire or ‘be retired’. There are plenty of anti-Ukrainian Greek bishop-candidates ready to take his place and Trump and Vance would support one of them. Just as Biden supported Patriarch Bartholomew.
More generally, there would have to be an Inter-Orthodox Council, a free one, held in humility, unlike the absurd meeting in Crete nine years ago.
It is a strange thing that the greatest economic and political event in the world in the last sixteen years was the Russian foundation of BRICS in Ekaterinburg in 2009. BRICS is an Alliance of Sovereign Nations, based on the profoundly Orthodox principle of Unity in Diversity, the principle of the Holy Trinity. It is strange that secular countries can follow that principle and hold summits every year, but not the Church, which seems to want Roman Catholic style or Soviet-style centralisation, instead of Councils and Conciliarity/Catholicity.
President Putin has on numerous occasions remarked that: ‘He who is not nostalgic for the USSR has no heart, but he who wants it back has no brain’. It seems to me that there are some in the Russian Church who have not yet heard his words.
Do you have refugees from the Ukraine among your parishioners? What churches do they attend? How do they see the conflict between the Russian and Ukrainian Orthodox Churches? Are there any difficulties with them?
Of course, we have many refugees, who come from the canonical Church of Vladyka Onufry. They attend any churches except for Russian churches. In London they have their own Ukrainian parishes. Russians must understand that the vast majority of Ukrainians will now never attend churches where His Holiness Patriarch Kyrill is commemorated. The Russian Church has lost the Ukraine for ever. We have no conflicts with any Ukrainians, because we accept them as we accept all Orthodox nationalities, including canonical Ukrainians who have been here for many years.
Does the British government support these refugees?
Of course, as do all Western governments. However, that support is political, not humanitarian. One day Western governments will drop them. All that Western governments are interested in is people who are anti-Russian. It is all very hypocritical, they do not care for Ukrainians as such.
- Orthodoxy in Great Britain
What is the situation of the Orthodox community in Great Britain? Is it growing? Or is the Orthodox presence the same as before?
There has been massive growth here over the last 15 years. This growth has been by immigration, specifically that of Romanians and Moldovans. Until then, there had been about 300,000 Orthodox here, with 200,000 Cypriots, and some 100,000 Serbs, Russians (mainly from the Baltics), Bulgarians, non-canonical Ukrainians and others. Then, over the last fifteen years, there arrived 1.1 million Romanians and Moldovans, meaning that today 1.4 million, 2% of the UK population, are Orthodox, I in 50, the vast majority Romanian-speaking.
Which Orthodox Churches are the most active and authoritative in Great Britain today?
Without doubt the Greeks and the Romanians. The Greeks now have several bishops, I think, six, and only on Lazarus Saturday they baptised 200 adults, nearly all Non-Greeks, in a mass baptism. They own many churches, though they suffer from the problem of elderly clergy, the result of 30 years of paralysis before their new Archbishop arrived here in 2019.
The Romanians are continually opening or buying new churches and dozens of seminary-qualified men are being ordained priests. I cannot remember when a Russian man was last ordained priest. It must be at least 10 years ago. As a result, the Russian Church is dying out. Other Orthodox, like the Serbs, Bulgarians and Georgians, also live in very small national ghettoes and do not produce their own clergy. As for the very small Antiochian group, virtually without Arab immigrants, they are intent on recruiting minute numbers of Anglicans Evangelicals, which is all rather strange and, just like the very small ROCOR, including their bishop, their clergy are not trained in Orthodox seminaries, but are untrained and the priests are part-time. That level of ignorance creates many problems. Thus, the Antiochians here are proud to give Copts and Ethiopians communion.
What is the attitude of the British government to Orthodox? Does it favour one jurisdiction over another? Is any support given? Are there political pressures on Orthodox clergy?
The British government remains, as always, completely indifferent to all. The government is atheist. There is no support at all for Orthodox, but no political pressure or persecution either. It is a free market.
Do native English, Scottish etc people join the Orthodox Church? If so, what attracts them?
Over the last 75 years some thousands of native people have joined the Church. I am one of them, 50 years ago. The late Metr Antony of Sourozh was one of those who played a role in this movement, though he seems to have converted almost only from the upper class. But a few thousand is a very small number over 75 years and many have passed away in that time. What attracts them? Spirituality, definitely not politics or nationalism. Nationalist parishes never have any converts. The heterodox world is unspiritual and woke. Who is attracted to that? Spiritual emptiness does not attract, just as a desert does not attract. The Faith of authentic Orthodoxy attracts, but not flag-waving nationalism, meaningless ritualism or corruption. Some Orthodox will die out, others will survive and expand. It all depends on spiritual content, or lack of it.
How do Orthodox perceive the immigration of Africans and Asians. Are there conflicts with them, with Muslims for example? Are they frightened for their future?
Forgive me, but this is a very strange question! You live in Russia, where there are two to three times more Muslims than here! Here most Orthodox are immigrants themselves, why should they have problems with other immigrants? The second language in England is Romanian, the third is Polish. I find Muslims especially respectful. One of them told me that only Orthodox are real Christians. They have little time for the others. We have baptised three former Muslims into our congregation, two Turks and one Iranian. One of our Ukrainian parishioners, who has been here for over 15 years, is a builder and helps build mosques for them. What a pity that Orthodox do not build churches! There are certainly no conflicts with such immigrants. We are not racists! Why should we be frightened of them? I do not understand your question.