Author Archives: Father Andrew

Weeping and Gnashing of Teeth in the Ukraine

Mr Trump is not yet President of the United States. However, his election just over a week ago and his nomination of several members of his administration is changing the world, not least in Europe. Here members of the political elite like Scholz, Macron and Starmer are trembling. However, none more so than Mr Zelensky in Kiev. We do not know if Mr Trump likes Mr Zelensky or President Putin. Probably nether of them. They are not very relevant to him. What we do know is that he likes himself. Indeed, as a narcissist, what he now wants is personal vengeance for all that was done to him for eight years.

As a result, many are now trembling. Others, like Mr Pompeo, excluded from his administration, are angry. Among the trembling are some in the Patriarchate of Constantinople, like Archbishop Elpidiforos (who had his photo taken with President Biden, whom he recommended to his flock) or Metropolitan Emmanuel and the other modernists there, unlike those there who hold traditional values. Not least the pseudo-clerics of their fake Church which the above bishops set up in the Ukraine. The pseudo-clerics include Sergei Dumenko and the gangsters and perverts of the ‘OCU’ – ‘Orthodox Church in the Ukraine’ under his authority. Read on:

https://spzh.live./en/zashhita-very/82999-without-pompeo-the-beginning-of-ending-world-support-for-ocu-project

 

The New Age of Sovereignty

You always knew who the goody was and who the baddy was in the cowboy films of the mid-twentieth century. The goody always wore a white hat, the baddy a black hat. Simple. This reflected the Cold War mentality of the time. The Capitalists were good, the Communists were bad. It was all an oversimplified world of good versus evil, right versus wrong, ‘with us or against us’, as per Bush. It was a simple, bipolar, dualist, Manichean world of black and white. It was not of course reality, which is usually lighter or darker grey.

In reality, although nobody liked the tyranny of Communism, especially those who lived in Communist countries, the paradoxical tragedy was that after the fall of Communism, the world became unipolar. In other words, the US and its Western vassals could brook no rivals. It was the ‘spoiled brat syndrome’ – ‘I am the only one’. ‘Hegemony’, that is, supremacy and domination over all, became the order of the day. But hegemony and bossy control freakery do not work – ask any Californian bishop who has tried to impose it.

However, as the whole world, except for the Western, now knows, neither a bipolar world (Capitalist versus Communist), nor a unipolar world (Western), work. Rule by one or two always leads to despotism. The solution is a multipolar world, which breaks the tyranny of the monopoly of one and the warring opposition of two. This is the realm of the Holy Trinity. Sadly, the West wants either unipolar or else bipolar, the ‘democratic’ (West) versus the ‘autocratic’ (East). This is the heretical nonsense of Manichaeism.

The fact is that the Western Establishment oligarchies are certainly autocratic, they ignore and despise their ‘deplorable’ peoples. ‘plebs’, as in France, the UK and Germany, all governed by minority governments. For the people are the greatest threat, as we saw from the very unexpected (for the elites) results of the referendum on Brexit and the recent US election. They were not unexpected for the people. As for the pro-Western CIA-sponsored dictatorships in the Arabian Peninsula, Latin America and Asia, are they not autocratic?

But the most autocratic of them all is the Kiev regime, which has banned other political parties, critical media, sent all opposition to the firing squads, prisons and torture chambers of the dreaded Secret Police, and is now even banning the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. On the other side, India is the world’s largest democracy. And President Putin can easily win any election, in the same way as the very popular political leaders of China and Iran. Some people like such ‘autocratic’ governments – the more the better, they say.

As long as the Western elites and their venal media criminalise or ‘hitlerise’ a dialogue with ‘cancelled’ Russia (though they talked to the USSR and China during the Cold War), the only end to NATO’s anti-Russian war in the Ukraine is Russian victory and their total defeat. And that will not be long now. The Western elite never cared about Ukrainians, or any other Non-Western people, it just used them as proxies, so their own troops did not have to die. However, this does not mean that the Russians are not guilty of mistakes.

For one thing, as President Putin has openly admitted, there was the continual Russian naivety with regard to Western politicians from 1989 on. The Russians actually thought they were dealing with honest people, viz the Minsk Accords. And then there has been the problem of the hangover of the old Soviet centralisation. After 1991, the Russian Federation failed to give the real Ukraine (the north-western half, not the Russian southern and eastern half), autonomy and to respect its culture and language, authentically Ukrainian.

It was the usual condescending Great Russian chauvinism and imperialism, dating back to the pre-Soviet times of the Imperialist Establishment, which says that if you are not Russian, you are a third-class citizen. This is the same attitude as in the Russian emigration, pre-Soviet and post-Soviet, towards all Non-Russians. This imperialist attitude of both many Russians (and many Americans – they have that in common) meant that the US conquered very venal Kiev in 2014 for a paltry $5 billion. But look at the miserable results.

The scale of the events in the Ukraine is that of a Shakespearian tragedy. The main role was performed by the CIA-hired and very overpaid actor and comedian Zelensky, who  firsthad to improve his English, learn Ukrainian and be reclothed in khaki sweatshirts for the role. Like Caesar, expect Zelensky to be betrayed and stabbed by Brutus. The Ides of March are near. President Putin is waiting for free Ukrainians to take power, perhaps with Trump’s backing. Then banned peace talks can start and the European elite can resign.

There needs to be a New Ukraine, sovereign, independent, free of NATO and the EU – which are not going to survive anyway. And as a Sovereign Nation  it must have its own autocephalous or independent Church. Ordinary Ukrainians, unlike their greedy oligarchic elites – usually Non-Ukrainians – have been the sacrificial lambs of both American and Soviet Imperialism. Hopefully, President Putin can persuade the Church in Moscow to abandon centralism and give autocephaly to all Russian Orthodox in territories outside the Russian Federation.

This may mean that before Trump’s inauguration in seventy days’ time the Russians will advance towards the Dnieper, taking from four to seven more Ukrainian provinces, including the Black Sea Coast, so joining up with Transdniestria. The territories outside the Russian Federation, where Russian Orthodox live, would need autocephaly, meaning a Church of the New Ukraine and a Church of the Baltics. All the other Diasporas, as well as Moldova, would have to come to an agreement with the other canonical Orthodox there.

Imperialism has always been a problem. It bankrupted the seventeenth-century empires of Spain and Portugal, of eighteenth-century France and of nineteenth-century Britain, each time the bankruptcy taking place in the century after greatness. Imperialism caused two ‘World’ (European) Wars. Now in the twenty-first century, Imperialism has bankrupted the USA. We believe that the Russian Federation has learned from the bankruptcy of the equally Imperialist USSR. The administration of the Russian Orthodox Church must learn that too.

We have entered the new Age of Sovereignty. Sovereignty is what multipolarity means, where one nation is balanced out by the others and no-one can become too powerful. All defend their own and each other’s interests, as the UN should have done. Away with the old Imperialism of unipolarity, World Dictatorship, and the bipolar Imperialisms of two rival blocs, everyone else crushed between them. We have entered the world of Sovereign Nations. Imperialism caused two World Wars and has nearly caused a Third. Enough is enough.

The Fall of the Pygmies: The Elite and the People

Will the US Republican Party one day be renamed ‘The Constitutional Party’? After all, the US Constitution opens with the words: ‘We, the People…’. Sadly, in European countries it is unlikely that the people will ever be commemorated constitutionally, at least under the present millennial ruling class. For now, Europe, that is, the feudal EU and its vassals like the UK, are run by the unelected grand-daughter of a Nazi officer and all her inherently racist and unelected commissars and minions who condemn the rest of the world as a jungle, whereas they themselves alone live in a civilised ‘garden’: yes, the garden where the twin seeds of Communism and Fascism were sown and grew up and where nearly two million babies are burned in incinerators every year.

In France the Sun-King President ignores the results of the recent elections, where his Party came third, but continues as a dictator in his Elysian Palace just as before, ignoring the people. In the UK a Party, for which only one fifth of the electorate voted, also rules as a dictatorship, imprisoning the free, still delusionally imagining that their British Establishment controls an Empire – on which in fact the sun set for ever in Suez in 1956. The Nordic countries whose elites have bound themselves hand and foot to the now redundant NATO are isolated. Italy is ‘governed’ by Meloni, captive to the equally redundant and perverted EU elite. Alone in Europe, in courageous Hungary and Slovakia, whose leader the elite tried to assassinate, are the people represented.

Of course, the US Establishment has already tried to assassinate Trump twice (and to imprison him on 34 charges) and so far he has done nothing. They know that as a narcissist he will want revenge. They tremble. They may try assassination again, as they did to President Kennedy, as they try to do to any President who may end lucrative arms contracts. As the President-elect smiles with another Kennedy, son and nephew of the assassinated, the repercussions of his victory are already visible – and so far he has only given rhetoric. In the US the Democrats who hate each other have begun their blame game. The foolishness of choosing figureheads who have dementia or are plainly stupid, in order better to pull their strings, is now clear. Abroad the situation is far worse.

As a result of Biden’s defeat, it only took a day to see the collapse of the German puppet government of Scholz, its thirst for revenge for German defeats in Russia since 1914 ever strong. It is doubtful if the desire for elections among the sad and impoverished German people can be delayed until next September. The collapse is due of course to the state of the German economy, disastrously cut off from cheap Russian energy, and therefore bankrupt like all the other Western European economies, and due to the wasteful sending of even more money to Kiev, which has lost the US war against Russia. The invasion of Russia through the NATO Kursk plan is ending in NATO scrap metal, just as predicted. Why support a regime, created by the CIA, which the CIA has now abandoned?

On 7 May 2024 the dictator – he is no longer a legal President, as he cancelled elections and sent the opposition to the prisons of his dreaded SBU secret police – Zelensky was nearly assassinated. This was by his Ukrainian bodyguards, which is why his new bodyguards are all American or else, according to some, British. The man is living on borrowed time, as he and his General Syrsky are so hated. Unwilling Ukrainian troops surrender and other Ukrainians give abundant details of military targets to Russians. These are the partisans, who would long ago have negotiated with the Russians and come to an agreement, saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of young Ukrainian men, and so creating a grave demographic crisis for the Ukraine for generations to come.

The European elite is in panic, as Biden’s misconceived war is over, like the regime-changed Biden himself. He and his racist European war criminal vassals have killed a million Ukrainian men. As the cowardly and parasitic European elite has been abandoned, it has lost the reason for its existence. Their hubristic attempt to destroy and dismember Russia, effecting regime-change in Moscow, failed totally, making President Putin even more popular, and also forcing Moscow to ally for ever with China, speeding the BRICS process and making the multipolar world real. Trump will waste no more on the Ukraine. He does not need an excuse, he can walk away, blaming the Biden regime, which, as far as he is concerned, in any case stole his election in 2020 through electoral fraud.

In response to abandonment by the US, the European elite will now call for ‘more Europe’, in other words, more of the same disastrous recipe for the destruction of national sovereignty, which has baked their poisoned cake. Any attempt, especially by the sexually perverted elites in France and Germany who have pulled the EU strings from the outset, will be dismissed in Eastern Europe. ‘More Europe’ is the way to lose them entirely. It will be dismissed in EU Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Czechia, Greece, Cyprus, Romania, Bulgaria and elsewhere, countries whose puppet rulers once agreed to Brussels, let alone in Non-EU countries like Serbia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Macedonia and even Albania. The future is ex-EU, if the EU survives anywhere.

After Biden’s defeat, the European ruling class scurried to meet at NATO and EU meetings. They know that Trump knows that they opposed him, none more so than the discredited UK Starmer, whose Foreign Minister Lammy openly insulted Trump, calling him a Neo-Nazi. Trump knows his enemies, even though now they hurry like a pack of dogs to lick up to him because he can feed them with titbits – or not. In Kiev the loser Zelensky still insults all his allies who do not give him even more hundreds of billions and arms, while he continues to persecute the Church. In Israel the Defence Minister, Gallant, was sacked immediately after Biden’s defeat – he was too much of a pragmatist who knows that Israel has lost. However, Biden, Starmer and the others are all complicit in Israeli genocide.

Even worse, they are all war criminals, responsible with the oligarchs in Kiev for the genocide of the people of the Ukraine. The Western Establishment has failed to weaken Russia. As for Western (Trumpian or other) fantasies about peace in the Ukraine, these are delusional. All peace plans, or rather fantasies, of the West are dialogues with itself, not with Russia. Russia does not need to dialogue – it is victorious. The West cannot give Kiev any more arms – it has none – and there are ever fewer Ukrainians willing to die for the US. There will be no ‘stalemates’ or ‘frozen conflicts’ in the Ukraine. President Putin is clear. The Russian part of the Ukraine will become Russia again while the rest becomes a sovereign, independent New Ukraine, free of the NATO and EU puppeteers.

The racist Western elite speaks of the existential defeat of the West and the defeat of Europe, after its defeat in the Ukraine by the victorious ‘Asiatic’ and ‘Mongol’ hordes as per Kiev’s Nazi propaganda. This is nonsense. This is only the defeat of a certain idea, THEIR IDEA of the West and THEIR IDEA of Europe, and of course the defeat and end of their power, overpaid jobs and millennial delusions. Those ideas certainly have been defeated and they have lost power. Time is up for the reckless Western elites who bet all their money at the casino table on ‘victory’ in the Ukraine. The time has come for the peoples of Europe to start governing themselves, tasting freedom, sending their parasitic elites into exile or to prison, as many of these war criminals so richly deserve.

This is what explains the ever-increasing authoritarianism of the ‘Fascist Liberalism’ of the modern West, the imposition of the Woke by bullying. Authoritarianism is always the death-rattle before the end. Thus, the Soviet Union became more and more authoritarian in the 70s and 80s because it knew that it was over. Thus, the European Union and NATO are doing the same. They too are over. And, as puppets, the European media, just like the media in the Soviet Union, applauds this authoritarianism. Sadly, this authoritarianism is echoed in Church affairs. All that happens then is that people turn their backs on the Church administration. Church bureaucrats suspend, punish or ‘defrock’ pastors and they become more popular and the bureaucrats less popular.

On a Church level, it may also mean that the faithful will begin to take over from the corrupt politicians. We remember the old Greek and Russian (all three of the Russian ones) jurisdictions, built on snobbery and which so despised ordinary, simple, but pious people, ‘the Soviet mob’, as one of their bishop-snobs called them. Of course, there were tragedies because the sociopathic elites would persecute, suspend and put on trial the good pastors who opposed them. This they did with St John of Shanghai in 1964 and then they disposed of the empathetic Ukrainian Metr Hilarion (Kapral). However, the Church will never be built on snobbery, but on the people. The upper-class ‘bishops’, monocles in their eyes, like Papist cardinals or slave-owning Anglican lords, will lose.

They have lost Western Europe to the ‘peasant’ immigrant masses of Romania, Moldova, Greece, Cyprus, to the sacrificial lamb of Ukrainians and those of the Russian Lands. This is why aristocratic Russian emigres were unable to found anything in Western Europe – they would not let the faithful participate – ‘they are not intellectuals like us’. In North America, a new Church did come into being, as it was the Church of poor Carpatho-Russian immigrants. All Churches are built on the people, on the masses, not on the imitation of elitist Roman Catholicism, a religious institution founded on the desire to replace Christ with an Emperor, or on Anglicanism, a religious institution founded on the personal lust and greed of a murderous renegade-King and his rapacious cronies.

The icons in our churches weep myrrh and exude Carpathian fragrance; the victory belongs to the simple people and to the people’s pastors and archpastors. The shepherds follow Christ, not the protocols of spiritual pygmies, elitist ideologues, racist and class spite, the intellectual fantasies of narcissistic and effeminate parasites, who seek only wealth and power, despising and mocking pastors and people. Their days, like the days of the clique in Kiev, are numbered. Their days, like those of von der Leyen, Starmer, Macron and Scholz and all the others, are numbered. They all dug ever deeper holes for themselves to commit suicide in. Now are the pygmies, who lorded it for so long, fallen, as Christ promised: ‘Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth’.

 

 

 

 

The Wind Is Turning

The old left and right divisions in politics are long since over. The division has long been between Globalism and Patriotism, the elitists and the people. And for the elitists the people are ‘deplorables’, ‘garbage’ and in the UK ‘plebs’. This is clear from the US election results. Here the only question is if President-elect Trump will be able to keep any of his promises.

Trump certainly did not do so in his first term, when he further indebted his country, surrounded himself with warmongering neocons, endowed the Ukraine with lethal weapons and a fake Church. And he also encouraged Israeli aggression, abandoned missile treaties and illegally sanctioned other countries.

Clearly, next year he could in a deBidenised White House begin to resolve the huge problems within the dysfunctional USA, repairing its economy and crumbling infrastructure, controlling illegal immigration, stopping any further indebtedness by drastically reducing military expenditure and cutting waste, renewing failing US democracy, eliminating electoral fraud and ending the oppression of Wokeism.

Abroad Trump could broker peace in the Middle East, refusing Israel arms, establishing a Palestinian State, withdrawing US occupation forces in Syria, doing deals with China, North Korea, Iran and Cuba, and stopping interference in other countries through CIA fronts, so-called NGOs, as in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Georgia, Armenia, Serbia, Central Asia etc, through colour revolutions.

In Europe he could broker a peace deal, not in the Ukraine, which has already lost its needless war with Russia, but in Europe, because that is what is needed for peace in the Ukraine. For instance, Trump could take a trip to Moscow next January, ending the illegal sanctions against the Russian Federation and the absurd Western warrant for the arrest of President Putin. Then he could accept the new leader of deBidenised Kiev.

Trump could agree to the de facto establishment of a New Ukraine as a Russian Protectorate, abandoning its Greek-sponsored fake Church, as it deserves. Here he could offer to guarantee self-determination referenda in the far west of the Ukraine to find out which country the peoples there actually wish to belong to. Such self-determination may be necessary elsewhere, in the Baltics and Moldova, for example, or at least Trump could insist on establishing democracy and human rights in those countries for their long-oppressed Russian minorities.

Once the peoples have decided, then a Peace and Security Treaty can be drawn up among all the peoples of Europe who wish to belong to the Russian world (basically the Russian Federation, Belarus and the New Ukraine) and those who do not. Demilitarisation and the abolition of the old Cold War NATO can then follow, as no-one would any longer need to fear anything from one anyone else. Trump could take part credit for all this, blaming everything else on Biden.

In Europe, politicians like Orban, Fico, Meloni, Wilders, Farage, Le Pen and those of the AfD in Germany will ascend in Trump’s wake. The old unelected EU bureaucrats and globalists like von der Leyen and the wildly unpopular Macron, Scholz and Starmer will have to disappear. Will the peoples of Europe finally be allowed the leaders they want? Will the Nations of Europe come together in sovereignty and freedom, in peace and co-operation, leaving the EU to die its natural death?

Indeed, in reality will Trump do any of these things? Will he be free to or even allowed to do any of them, without getting assassinated? Or will he instead, as just another figurehead of the bankrupt USA, send more arms to the Ukraine and Israel and declare war on Iran and China? Will the US Congress continue to be Zionist-occupied territory? Will the madmen and madwomen of the EU and the UK declare war on Russia? These are the stuff of nightmares. However, they are also possible. The wind may be turning, but is it turning in the right direction? Or will it all just be more of the same?

 

 

The Fall of the Moscow Patriarchate and the Rise of the Russian Orthodox Church

‘God so loved the world that He did not send a Committee’.

Foreword: The Hundred Years War Is Ending

The Hundred Years War (1914-2024) is at last ending, not in Sarajevo where the first part began in 1914, not in Warsaw, where the second part began in 1939, but in Kiev, where the third part began in 2014. The second and third parts were made inevitable by the key, first part, caused by rival Imperialisms. All three parts have pulled into Europe the USA, which had profited from them until the last part. But the seeds of US success contained the seeds of its own destruction. In order to maintain its supremacy, the US yoked itself to a delusional madman in Kiev, who has the most developed sense of entitlement of any of his people. When he does not get the means of destruction that he wants, and that is always more and more lethal, he throws a tantrum, like any spoilt actor or diva who wants adulation.

As with any spoilt child, all you have to do is call his bluff, that is, ignore him and walk away. However, he is still by far the most dangerous dictator of the many recruited and employed by the US, in any banana republic whether in Latin America, Western Europe, the Middle East or the Far East, with the possible exception of the equally genocidal maniac, Netanyahu. For Kiev wants nuclear weapons. It was inevitable. All that the US – and hysterical Western Europe – have to do is to pull the carpet from under the Kiev dictator’s feet. However, war victory in the Ukraine, or even the potential peace victory, do nothing to solve the spiritual and structural crisis in the Russian Church, whose jurisdiction used to extend to all the territories of the former USSR and beyond them to the Western world.

The Fall of the Moscow Patriarchate

The Russian Orthodox Church administration in Moscow, founded, named and centralised in Soviet times as ‘the Moscow Patriarchate’, is in great difficulty. It has once again tried to impose impossible political demands on the consciences of clergy and faithful everywhere, just as it did in the late 1920s, of which the ‘Sergianist’ mentality is currently much admired within the Patriarchate. These political demands stretch to outside the Russian Federation and Belarus – though even inside these countries it has great difficulties. There it has even ‘defrocked’ clergy for having political views on the tragic conflict in the Ukraine which are different from those of the Patriarchal authorities.

Wanting to pray not for ‘victory’, but for peace, that is, for the Victory of Christ, persecuted independent clergy have often had to flee abroad. Moscow also finds its churches boycotted by many faithful all over Russia. Surely an Orthodox is defined by his agreement with the Creed, the Symbol of Faith, not by his political views? Why this dogmatisation of political opinions and the canons, as also happened during the Soviet period? Surely the dogmatisation of non-dogmatic political views is, by definition, uncanonical? Outside those two Russian territories, where Patriarchal authority is backed up by the State, the situation of the Moscow Patriarchate is not just difficult, but catastrophic.

Inside the Former USSR

Inside the former USSR, the worst situation is in the Ukraine. Here over 12,000 churches and their clergy no longer commemorate the Russian Patriarch, since he is seen as an enemy leader. This is a pastoral disaster. How does a pastor come to be seen as the enemy of his people? He may reply that their perspective is wrong, but the fact is that that is how they perceive him. And it is too late to do anything about it. In Latvia, Russian Orthodox also no longer commemorate him, as the four besieged bishops there have had to declare independence from Moscow, despite their divided flock, who are often boycotting the Church. The situation is chaotic.

Meanwhile, in Lithuania and Estonia, the Russian Church is faced by schisms due to its disputed authority. Indeed, the Patriarch is not even allowed entry into Lithuania (nor into the UK and Canada). In Central Asia, there is dissidence and some are leaving for abroad, others declare that they are retiring. In Moldova, the only country in the former Soviet Union (apart from Georgia) where there is a canonical alternative to the Moscow jurisdiction, over a hundred more clergy have this year alone left with their parishes for the Orthodox Patriarchate of Romania, tired of Russian nationalism, racism and their mistreatment as third-class citizens.

Outside the Former USSR

Outside the territories of the former USSR, the Moscow Patriarchate finds itself in schism with the imperialistic Greek Orthodox world as a result of mutual disputes regarding ‘canonical territory’. This is not because either is intent on doing missionary work among Non-Orthodox, but rather each is intent on trying to steal each other’s flocks. In North America, Metropolitan Nicholas, the leading bishop of the Anabaptist ROCOR sect, an out-of-control American Protestant-style and anti-Russian (!) schismatic group under the Moscow Patriarchate, finds that people walk out on him when he prays for the Russian Patriarch and people refuse to donate.

In Western Europe many Russian Orthodox priests refuse to commemorate the Russian Patriarch or have left him. As for the Ukrainians, they have set up 100 parishes, separate from Moscow in Western Europe. And Moldovans are doing the same. In Australia and especially in Latin America, many will have nothing to do with the Moscow Patriarchate. In general, outside the former USSR, the parishes of the Moscow Patriarchate resemble ever smaller, ever more inward-looking, ever more nationalistic groups, often numbering only a dozen or two. As for native Orthodox people, everywhere they are tired of being treated as third-class citizens by Moscow and are leaving.

Babylon Versus Jerusalem

Let us be frank. The mentality that now pervades the apparently often ‘effeminate’ upper reaches of the Moscow Patriarchate is careerist, not saintly, political, not pastoral, bureaucratic, not spiritual, nationalistic, not multinational, Statist, not canonical. For that reason, they are losing their authority and people are, as the phrase goes, voting with their feet and leaving them. However, this fall of the ‘cardinals’ (be they overt or covert) of the Moscow Patriarchate and its associated Soviet-period administrative groups, like ROCOR, is leading to the rise of the Russian Orthodox Church, for the fall of Babylon always leads to the rise of Jerusalem, paradoxically the dead hand of the State brings opposition and so life.

The Rise of the Russian Orthodox Church

The fall of top-heavy, militaristic, Soviet-period superstructures like the Moscow Patriarchate or ROCOR is because the grassroots faithful want to return to the authentic Church. The great mainstream tradition of the monastics, pastors and people of the Russian Church is very much alive. Who were Sts Antony and Theodosius of the Kiev Caves? They were real Churchmen, not careerist administrators with their ‘protocols’, they were enlighteners of the peoples of Rus, who brought forth a host of saints, whose holy relics lie in the Kiev Caves today and give out myrrh, calling to God.

Who was the great Russian Orthodox St Sergius of Radonezh? Why is he called the Builder of Russia? He was the heir to that multinational network of monks and saints who spread again the prayer of the heart from St Gregory Palamas and Mt Athos through the Balkans north to the Russian Lands. He and his disciples, like St Nil of Sora, set up dozens and dozens of monasteries to spread the Word of God into still pagan central Russia and this movement spread ultimately to Siberia, the Pacific Coast and even beyond, through St Herman of Alaska and his companions, who spread the Light of Christ to California.

More Recent Saints

Who was St Job of Pochaev? He was the monastic founder who turned the Western Ukraine into an advanced post of Orthodoxy, a bastion against those whose filioquism was a political instrument for the Polish oppression of Orthodox in order to gain more power and wealth. Who was St Paisy (Velichkovsky)? He was the heir to the monastic renewal, forced by persecuting German Tsarinas to take refuge from what is now the Ukraine in what is now Romania, and from there to re-enlighten the Russian Lands, liberating them from the schismatic curses caused by the purely external observances of ritualism and State nationalism.

Who was St Seraphim of Sarov? He was the old, bent-over monk digging in his vegetable-patch in Sarov, whom the rich and ignoble noble regarded as a dirty peasant, because he looked at the saint’s rags and not his praying heart of gold, and who was canonised at the insistence of the pious Tsar against the opinion of bishop-bureaucrats. Who was St John of Kronstadt? He was the righteous and fragrant pastor who prophesied all, exactly as it happened, because the idle rich parasites, who persecuted him and were jealous of him, refused to repent for their persecution of the real Church and the Tsar and enraged the oppressed who then revolted.

The Saints After 1917

Who were the New Martyrs and Confessors, from Tsar Nicholas to St Tikhon, Apostle of America, Bishop of San Francisco and American citizen, who had the services translated into English, and then became the Patriarch of Moscow, from the Martyrs of Solovki to the 20,000 Martyrs of Butovo, from the Martyrs of Kazakhstan to the Martyrs of Kolyma, from St Matrona of Moscow to St Seraphim of Vyritsa, from St Laurence of Chernigov to St Luke of Crimea? Who was the universal missionary St John of Shanghai and Western Europe, persecuted and suspended by ROCOR bishops for being a good pastor and not a right-wing ideologist, and the wise fool Mother Alypia of Kiev, who saw through sinners to their hearts?

These all were those who thought nothing of nationality and politics, but knew that if they sought the Kingdom of Heaven first, then all would be added unto them, and for this reason they became saints. And, despite the persecution of bishop-bureaucrats, effeminates in love with luxury, they were and are followed by a countless host of saints, fools-for-Christ, prophets, faithful women and children, priests and nuns, who are victorious, as they were and are not the practitioners of politicians, but, as practitioners of Christ, the victims of politicians. We know that we are on their side and are undefeatable, for we follow Christ, Who overthrew the devil and defeated our enemy, Death, restoring all to Life.

Jerusalem Conquers Babylon

Faithfulness to the thousands of years of the Saints of the Universal Church, from the Patriarchs and Prophets of the Old Bible, from the Mother of God to St John the Forerunner, from the Apostles to the Martyrs, from St Spyridon to St Nicholas, from St Basil to St John Chrysostom, from St Maximus the Confessor to St Paraskeva, from St Xenia to St Nectarius of Aegina, and faithfulness to the thousand years of Saints of the Russian Lands, are why the Russian Orthodox Church triumphs against the political schisms of mere Patriarchal ‘careerist administrators’ and ‘effective managers’. The Saints all show not the Primacy of ecclesiastical bureaucrats, but the Primacy of the Holy Spirit, the Victory of Christ. 

Afterword: God Gives Opportunities

The territory of the Russian Federation forms by far the largest country in the world. It is the territory of the USA and the Continent of Australia combined. Its natural resources are extraordinary. In a word, it has everything. It could easily support a population five or perhaps ten times greater than it has now. And yet this is the country that suicidally threw so much away in 1917, before which year the Russian Empire had undergone phenomenal growth for a generation, which was to continue. In 1914 its projected population by the year 2000 was some 600 million. That of the Russian Federation today is 145 million.

I remember visiting the USSR in 1973 and 1976 and saying that I would not return until the Church was free. I remember visiting the Russian Federation many times between 2007 and 2018 and always thinking the situation is on a knife-edge. Either it will go one way, towards Orthodoxy, or else to the other, to militaristic nationalism and purely outward and bureaucratic ritualism. It went this other way. However, there is still the chance to step back from suicide, to the catholicity of the Church, towards good relations with the other Local Churches, so rejoining the mainstream of Love and Truth. May it be so!

 

Right Makes Might: On the Emerging Post-Western New World Order

Introduction: In the Ukraine

The only question here is if the Kiev regime will collapse and capitulate before 1 January 2025 or afterwards. Western media still practise ‘editorial control’ (= censorship) and distraction (= talk about something else which is petty, irrelevant and of no importance). However, they affect only the fairy-tale ‘narrative’, not the reality of, for example, 100,000 desertions from the NATO-directed, Kiev regime Army. These press-ganged soldiers are refusing to fight because they do not want to commit suicide in the utterly corrupt armed forces.

There is nothing to fight for. They want to go home to their families. Conversely, in Russia they are talking not about Western delusions, which they ignore, but about reality, for example, reparations to be paid by Kiev and war crime trials for the Nazi Kiev regime leaders, who have in fact murdered their own people. They are the true anti-Ukrainians, together with Western leaders who want to fight against Russia ‘to the last Ukrainian’. It is their version of genocide. Such Western leaders too should be tried in war crimes courts.

In the Russian Federation

As regards today’s Russia, some silly people ask if it will revert to the Imperialism of Peter I of 1721 to 1917 or to the very similar Imperialism of the Soviets 1922-1991 (the Soviets adored Peter I), as obviously Russia will not revert to the catastrophes of Western oligarchism (1991-2022).

Clearly, Russia will return to no form of Imperialism because they all by definition failed. The Western academics who propose such fantasies have no understanding. Russia is reverting to itself, which is what Tsar Nicholas II wanted, before he was removed by the Western plotters in 1917, who prevented him from doing so.

The problem is that this truth has not yet been told about the 1917 tragedy. Once the diaries of the Tsarina Alexandra, concealed for so many years, are finally published, all will know and all the Western ‘narratives’ about 1917 will then collapse.

In Europe

The EU has clearly become a vassal of the Washington neocon elite – just as the UK has long been. The EU elite, like the UK elite, is no longer pro-European, but pro-NATO, that is, pro-Washington, that is, anti-European. This is why when Germany’s Nordstream lifeline to Russian energy was blown up by the USA and its proxies and the country went into serious economic decline, the German ruling class was silent. Europe’s rulers hate their own countries and peoples, whom they ignore, even when the people vote them out, as in France. The elitists are anti-national because they are globalists.

The oligarchic nomenklatura of unelected European Union Commissioners, some of them the grandchildren of Nazi officers, are silent. In any case, the elite of the Brussels Politburo has little concept of the lives of ordinary Europeans. It is only an imitation of the unelected oligarchy who rule in Washington, and who also have no concept of the lives of ordinary Americans. They too are anti-national because they too are globalists. The solution to Europe’s self-inflicted woes is neither to be found in being pro-US, nor in being pro-Russian.

The solution is to be found in being pro-European, that is, pro-Hungarian, pro-Slovak, now pro-Georgian (after the failure there of US/’NGO’ and EU electoral fraud under its French puppet President) and, one day, perhaps even pro-French, pro-German, pro-Italian and pro-English. But that means liberation from the yoke of the globalist corporatism which rules us. This means not only liberation from their political yoke, but also from the ideological yoke of the ‘journalists’ paid by that elite, the mere propagandist-mercenaries of the oligarchs. None of them has ever heard the word ‘Truth’.

The World

The West has been defeated, not by millions of Vietnamese or Afghan peasants, but by the Russian Superpower against the (US-supplied and US-trained) largest army in NATO, that of the Kiev regime. The only way that the US could ever have won in the Ukraine is by launching a nuclear war against Russia, which would have meant the utter destruction of the USA itself, since Russia has better nuclear arms than the USA. The defeat of the Western Establishment in the Ukraine means that Might does not make Right. This is why the New World Order is about multilateralism, multipolarity, countries working together for their mutual benefit.

We are no longer talking about being dominated and exploited by one imperialist power. Imperialism, which caused World War I, World War II and nearly World War III, is being replaced by Sovereignism, the co-operation of nation-states. The multilateral or multipolar BRICS is now replacing the Western World Order and its Western-controlled UN and other puppet organisations. This is because those who join BRICS enhance their sovereignty, instead of handing it over to some new Washington or Brussels. It will be up to the West to eat humble pie and enter BRICS, as an equal among many, merely part of the World Community, for it is Right that makes Might, not the other way round. This is the millennial revelation to the Western world. The days of its Supremacy and its G7 club are over.

BRICS includes all Non-Western continents, Asia (China, India), Europe (Russia), Africa (South Africa) and South America (Brazil). Now with ten core members (true, Saudi Arabia has not yet formalised its membership as Number 10), there are twenty-five more countries which are sooner or later going to become full members or partner-states, including Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Algeria, Nigeria, Senegal, Uganda, Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tadzhikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, Syria, Turkey, Belarus and Serbia. BRICS has gone from a Non-Western Alliance to a true International Community, far more representative of the world than the US puppet, which is called the failed UN.

Conclusion: The Church

Right is Might is in fact the principle of the canon law of the Orthodox Church. And that is why all those who promote nationalist politics in Church administrations, that is, who proclaim that Might is Right against the law of the Gospel, the primacy of the Kingdom of Heaven, forfeit all spiritual and moral right to their positions.

Those who place racist politics and their nationalist ‘protocols’ above the pastoral care of souls do not qualify. They will disappear and, at best, be forgotten by history – at worst, they will die like Arius. The future is with those who clearly have a universal message, which can appeal to all. The paths of the sect lead but to inglory.

 

 

 

 

 

The Ukraine: Winning the War, Winning the Peace and Winning the Church

Introduction

The world has been contorted by the catastrophic conflict in the Ukraine, which in turn has led to the genocidal massacres around the US proxy of Israel. But what if the first conflict ended? Surely the second conflict would also end, and the third conflict, threatened by the US against China through its proxies in Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and the Philippines, would never even begin? Ever since losing its war in Korea in 1953, when it was driven back into the south of the Korean Peninsula, and then, much more disastrously, since losing its war in Vietnam in 1975, when it was entirely ejected, the US has conducted proxy wars. In such wars, others are paid to do the dying on its behalf, just as Non-Romans were paid to die for the pagan Roman Empire on its behalf.

Proxies are convenient because they are expendable, but, as in Afghanistan, proxies can always turn and take the side of their own people against US and Western occupiers. If we may draw a parallel, in the Ukraine we are now in January 1945. Hitler has just disastrously lost his Ardennes offensive, just as Zelensky has just disastrously lost the NATO-planned Kursk offensive. The delusional Hitler, like the delusional Zelensky, is in his bunker, refusing to negotiate because of his wishful thinking. So delusional that he drew up a ‘victory plan’, which was in fact a defeat plan, since NATO countries do not want their soldiers to die for the comedian in Kiev, which is what the ‘victory plan’ entailed.

When that did not work, Zelensky decided to tell everyone that North Korean troops are fighting for Russia and so therefore NATO troops should officially fight for Kiev!  When this was laughed down, he said that he wanted a ceasefire. Of course, he does – just like Hitler’s lieutenants wanted a ceasefire when Soviet troops were at the gates of Berlin in 1945. There was no ceasefire then, and there will not be this time either. After all, last week Zelensky was talking about dropping non-existent nuclear bombs on Russia. The delusion is clear – except to the delusional. The Ukrainian Army is crumbling – few in it even want to fight, the collapse is inevitable, though many Western politicians are still, even now, in delusional denial, believing their own PR lies.

Winning the War

In the Ukraine the US has actually publicly proclaimed that it will fight ‘to the last Ukrainian’ (soldier). They are now close to achieving that catastrophic aim. This tragic conflict between fellow-Slavs was never a territorial war. When you are by far the largest country in the world and one of the least populated, as Russia is, territory is totally irrelevant to you.

This is a conflict being fought because the US and its puppets threatened the Russian population both in Russia and in the Ukraine with genocide through conventional, nuclear and biological arms. This is a conflict which is therefore all about Russian security and national identity.

The Russian Army, now greatly expanded in number through enthusiastic volunteers, has been advancing for over two years in a war of attrition and encirclement in the Ukraine. At the latest, this conflict will end in 2025, perhaps in early 2025, given the present Ukrainian situation, exactly as the then Russian Minster of Defence announced in 2023. This deeply tragic conflict in the Ukraine is now drawing to its end, with Russia militarily victorious against NATO, but with Ukrainian military manpower bled to death.

Winning the Peace

As is well-known, it is one thing to win a war, but what happens after the war is over? How do you win the peace? It is clear that the Russian Army has never wanted to invade the whole of the Ukraine or harm Ukrainian civilians. In that sense it is pro-Ukrainian – unlike the Kiev junta, which has been destroying the Ukraine and Ukrainians. The only territories of interest are the formerly Russian east and south, where a majority of the oppressed population has always considered itself to be Russian, ever since their families were forcibly transferred to the Ukraine by Bolshevik tyranny in 1922. The only enemy has been the military. What then will happen in the north and west of the old, Soviet-created, Ukraine in conditions of peace? In other words, what will happen after the Ukraine has been decommunised, returned to the pre-Communist situation?

It appears that the Russian policy here has always been to wait for a popular Ukrainian revolt, perhaps by a group of disaffected soldiers and officers, tired of being used as cannon fodder for the Neo-Nazis, and the disaffected will overthrow the murderous, US-created junta in Kiev. This would allow them to establish a popular and once more democratic government of the New Ukraine. This would in effect unite at least ten, perhaps more, provinces of the north and west of the old Soviet Ukraine into a neutral country, a southern Belarus, demilitarised and denazified, as Russia and all want. Its capital would remain in Kiev and it would have its sovereignty and defence guaranteed by Russia against NATO imperialism and its economy rebuilt by BRICS.

The old Ukraine was the most prosperous part of the USSR. It is potentially very wealthy. The New Ukraine, Ukrainian-speaking and independent, but Non-Nazi and demilitarised, would also be a country of freedom for the Church, with all the 1500 churches stolen so far by the thugs of the US-organised fake Church restored to the canonical Church. The fake Church would then collapse and disappear. Then also would come the end of absurd and illegal Western sanctions against Russia and Russians, which have effectively bankrupted not Russia, but Western Europe.

Winning the Church

All of this would do nothing to create peace inside the Orthodox Church, that is, to resolve the five-year long schism within the Confederation of the 16 Local Orthodox Churches. This is the schism between the largest and the once most prestigious Churches, between the Russian Patriarchate in Moscow and the US-controlled Greek Patriarchate in Istanbul (Constantinople), backed by its small colony in Alexandria. This situation echoes once again how the last century was, in Europe especially, the age of Imperialisms, when Europe and the Orthodox Church found themselves crushed between the Imperialisms of Nazism and Communism. Spain was the early example of a country caught between the two Imperialisms in the late 1930s, but it was Central and Eastern Europe which were affected even more profoundly.

For example, in the 1930s and 1940s Poland, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria and Greece were in particular tragically caught up in the geopolitical bloodshed of the Nazi and Communist powerbrokers and had to switch sides very swiftly. Today, it is the Orthodox Churches precisely in Central and Eastern Europe, which find themselves caught between the nationalist power politics of Moscow and Constantinople. They are caught between Russian and Greek and their completely unspiritual battle for imperialistic territorial control. These Orthodox Churches in Central and Eastern Europe, which stand between those ecclesiastical Imperialisms, mean specifically the ten Local Churches of Romania, Serbia, Bulgaria, together with (North) Macedonia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Albania, Georgia, and even, screaming and kicking from Greek nationalism, those of Greece and Cyprus.

They will be joined by the many millions of the still not autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church and of Orthodox in Moldova and elsewhere, who have all long been victims, third class citizens, of either Greek or else Russian imperialism, and their territorial battles and jealousies. Nobody recognises the ‘defrockings’ of clergy for purely political and schismatic reasons. Thus, wronged and ‘defrocked’ but genuine pastors from the Russian Church have had to flee sociopathic or morally corrupt bishops to the Constantinople and Romanian Churches, while others have fled the politicking of Constantinople for the Russian Church. It is an international scandal, so-called Christians practising hatred.

Conclusion

It is the above ten Local Churches, a majority, most probably supported by three Non-European Local Churches, those of Antioch, Jerusalem and America, which will be left to meet at a Council. Here they will have to call on the Churches of Moscow and Constantinople, the latter supported by the aggrieved Church of Alexandria, to resolve their differences. These differences relate directly to the imperialistic attitudes taken by the administrations of these Churches. These effeminately vengeful attitudes have caused them to dispute territorial control and leading them into schism and mutual, uncanonical and unrecognised ‘defrockings’.

These three Churches of Moscow, Constantinople and Alexandria are going to find themselves under pressure to reach canonical agreements. These would include the granting of full independence (autocephaly) to Non-Greeks and Non-Russians at present suffering inside them, who are, naturally, concerned neither by Greek, nor by Russian nationalism. Directly these would include at the very least the peoples of the New Ukraine and Moldova. However, the fates of Orthodox in the Baltic States, in Africa and the Diasporas of Western Europe, the Americas and Australia, must also be taken into account and autocephaly granted to them. Here is the opportunity for the purely political and centennial anti-canonical scandal of ‘jurisdictions’ to be overcome, caused only by those who are clinging on to power and money.

Then we shall at last begin to live in a normal Orthodox Church, which has suffered so much since 1917 from the abnormal situation in which we have been forced to live because of bishop-politicians and not bishop-pastors. The bishop-pastors, from St Nectarios of Aegina to St John of Shanghai and Western Europe, have, with their disciples, always been slandered and persecuted by the former. Enough. The careerist wolves in shepherd’s clothing, who deceive sincere but untutored neophytes are to be cast out. There are plenty there to defrock.

 

Two Saints of Huntingdonshire

St Neot

This future saint was born in the west of England in the first half of the ninth century. In early life he came under pressure from his father, Ethelwulf, to become a soldier, but instead he became a novice at the monastery in Glastonbury. He was probably helped in this refusal by the fact that physically he was very short. Neot must originally have had an English name. However, as at that time the word ‘neophyte’ was commonly used for monastic novices, this was shortened to ‘neot’, giving the future saint his name.

Neot was admired for his zeal with humility and would get up in the middle of the night to go to the church and pray. In time, pilgrims from all over started going to Glastonbury to listen to Neot’s wisdom. However, he desired to live as a hermit in a quieter spot. Therefore, he travelled westwards, like many English people at the time, to settle near a remote place in central eastern Cornwall, then known as Hamstoke. The location Neot chose was surrounded by thick woodland and hills. In time Hamstoke became known as Neotstoke, for Neot lived here, as if he were a novice, a ‘neot’, mortifying his body by fasting, vigil and prayer.

Later a monastery formed around him and Neot was made Abbot. King Alfred became a visitor and the King’s miraculous healing here came as a result of the holiness of Abbot Neot. In 877 the Abbot fell ill and sensing his earthly end, he took communion. He addressed his flock as a faithful shepherd, instructing all to live in peace and stretching forth his hands towards heaven, he breathed out his spirit. It was 31 July. His relics were kept at the monastery and they attracted considerable numbers of pilgrims.

A century later, and very far from Cornwall in the west, in about 975 a monastery was founded in the east of England, close to the River Great Ouse in Eynesbury. This is in what was until 1974 Huntingdonshire, though now called part of Cambridgeshire. A local nobleman and landowner, usually known by the name of Leofric and his Lady Leofleda, set up a monastery on their land and chose a notable holy person as their patron.

This was St Neot, as he had become famous through his healing of the English King Alfred and many miracles. This choice may also have been influenced by the Celtic blood and speech of many in the local population (see below). An Englishman from Celtic Cornwall would have made this a wise choice. With the support of King Alfred’s great-grandson, King Edgar (+ 975), who was encouraging monastic life, and despite some opposition in Cornwall, St Neot’s relics, apart from one arm, were brought from Cornwall to Eynesbury.

Here they were placed in a shrine at the monastery and Eynesbury came to be renamed Neotsbury, now St Neots. The church at the monastery was consecrated in the presence of the monastic founder Ethelwold, Bishop of Winchester (+ 984), Æscwin, Bishop of Lincoln, Brithnoth, Abbot of Ely, and many other notables. Leofric and Lady Leofleda asked Abbot Brithnoth and Bishop Æscwin for their protection and that they would send more monks there from the nearby monasteries in Ely and Thorney.

Although the monastery of Neotsbury, that is, St Neots, was attacked by the Danes in 1010, the buildings were repaired and rebuilt, and it is recorded that the relics of St Neot, which had been saved, had been restored to the monastery by 1020. Although 31 July is St Neot’s Day, locally in St Neots in Cambridgeshire, his feast was kept on 28 October, the day of the translation of his relics from Cornwall. St Neot’s relics disappeared at the Protestant Reformation, but may still be concealed in the town of St Neot’s today and protecting it.

St Ives

St Ives (also known as Ivo) was a bishop, originally from Celtic Cornwall. His relics were uncovered in about 1001 when a peasant found his coffin with an intact body and three other bodies while ploughing at a place then called Slepe, later renamed St Ives, in Huntingdonshire. St Ives appeared to the ploughman in several visions, obliging him to tell a monk at the large monastery at nearby Ramsey, one of the five great Fenland monasteries, of his discovery. The latter did not take this seriously at first, whereon St Ives also appeared to him in visions.

When the monastic community learned of this, they rejoiced at the discovery. Abbot Ednoth of Ramsey set about building a church in St Ives’ honour near the site of the discovery and this settlement was given the right to hold a market and renamed St Ives. On 24 April 1002 Abbot Ednoth translated St Ives’ body and a small monastery was founded in Slepe. His feast was assigned precisely to 24 April. Later there was some confusion and some claimed that St Ives was a Persian saint. This is untrue.

Some non-believers have suggested that St Ives was a pure invention in order to attract pilgrims and so generate income in competition with the nearby town of Eynesbury/St Neots, sixteen miles further down the river. A generation earlier it had obtained the relics of the English St Neot from Cornwall. However, St Neot’s relics were physically brought to St Neots, whereas those of St Ives and his companions were miraculously found. This coincidence and both Cornish connections can perhaps be explained by the fact that the local population in the isolated fenlands, including around St Ives and Ramsey, was, as in other isolated pockets in England, Celtic (‘British’).

Even in the eleventh century Celtic/Brythonic speech could still be heard in the area, notably around nearby Ramsey, where some of the relics found were kept. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FHRTpEhaAs). This indicates that in the fifth and sixth centuries, before the settlement of the English, there may have been a small monastery here, set up from Cornwall to serve local remaining Celtic Christians and then centuries later a ploughman had found the relics of the monastic founders. Although the present location of the relics of St Ives is unknown, the town of St Ives still has a special atmosphere today.

Holy Neot and Ives, Pray to God for us!

Our Archbishop Athanasius of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

The Most Reverend Athanasius of Bogdania, Vicar Bishop of the Diocese of Italy, was elected on Friday 25 October to the dignity of the Romanian Orthodox Archbishop of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The newly elected Archbishop of Great Britain is 42 years old and has been a bishop of the Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church since May 2018.

He was born on 17 January 1982 in Chisinau in the Republic of Moldova, being the first of the two sons of Eugen and Ala Rusnac and also speaks Russian. He has held Romanian citizenship since 12 October 2010.

He was tonsured monk on 8 December 2008 and then was ordained deacon. On 16 April 2009 he became a priest for the chapel of the Diocesan Centre and the Dormition Monastery in Rome. Between 2009 and 2018 he served at the ‘Dormition of the Virgin Mary’ Chapel next to the Diocesan Centre in Rome.

On 15 February 15 2018, he was elected Vicar Bishop of the Romanian Orthodox Diocese of Italy, with the title of Bogdania , and on 1 May he was consecrated bishop.

Archbishop Athanasius was an engineer. He studied between 2000 and 2005 at INSA Lyon (Institut National des Sciences Appliqués de Lyon – France). He obtained the degree of Engineer with a Master’s degree, his speciality – Telecommunications and Networks. He also followed a specialisation internship in the field of IT (MT Systems – Lyon, France).

Between 2006 and 2010, he attended the ‘Saint-Serge’ Faculty of Orthodox Theology in Paris, as did Fr Andrew Phillips, but that was over 25 years earlier. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in pastoral theology in 2010. Between 2010 and 2012, he attended a Master’s course in Practical Theology (Canon Law), at the Faculty of Theology ‘Andrei Șaguna’ in Sibiu. Master’s thesis – ‘Principles of Canon Theology in the Diaspora, with special reference to Italy’.

The Archdiocese of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, as well as the Diocese of Ireland and Iceland, were established on 29 February 2024. The new dioceses are part of the Romanian Orthodox Metropolia of Western and Southern Europe.

There are over a million Romanians living in Great Britain who currently have 100 parishes, branches and Orthodox missions, as well as three monasteries.

An article from 2020

The life story of the hierarch baptised at the age of eight. From Communism to the Italian diaspora.

The youngest Romanian hierarch, Bishop Atanasie de Bogdania, turned 38 on Friday 17 January 2020. The hierarch gave an interview in which he talks about the story of his life, beyond the already known biography during his almost two years of service as Vicar Bishop of the Diocese of Italy.

Bishop Atanasie de Bogdania was born in Chisinau during the atheist Communist regime and was baptised around the age of eight along with his brother and father. He first became an engineer in Telecommunications and Networks in France, and then a monk in Italy, being a close disciple of Metropolitan Joseph of Western and Southern Europe and of Bishop Silouan of Italy.

His Eminence’s father was a university professor, and his mother worked in a publishing house, things that did not allow them to have visible faith in society. Both the wedding of the parents and the baptism of the children took place after 1990.

‘My father, after Communism fell, with great joy went to the first church he came across, a place of worship that had recently opened because the vast majority of churches had been closed, and asked the priest to marry him. The father, being an experienced minister, asked him: ‘Are you baptised?’, «No!», «But children?», «No children are baptised!».

“In this context, all three of us were baptised: me, my brother, the current deacon Mircea and my father. Shortly after, the parents got married,” recalls the hierarch.

“So, the first encounter with God consciously took place right when I received the Sacrament of Baptism at the age of 8. I remember the gestures that the priest made, the songs from the choir, the emotion of the people who surrounded us, that “How many of you have been baptized in Christ, have also clothed yourselves in Christ”, all of this left a mark on me”.

The Archbishop says that the Most Reverend Metropolitan Joseph and the Most Reverend Bishop Silouan formed him.

“At that time I was young, at 18 I arrived in France and with other colleagues from the INSA Lyon Faculty we went together to monasteries, churches and meetings with young people organised by the parishes. Such great openness, the natural way in which the hierarchs behaved, the way in which they approached people, opened in me this leaning towards Theology”.

This was followed by theological studies and various ministries within the EORI (Romanian Orthodox Episcopate of Italy): Diocesan Secretary, Administrative Counsellor, Exarch of the Monasteries and Diocesan Vicar.

On 15 February 2018, the Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church elected him Vicar Bishop of the Diocese of Italy, with the title “of Bogdania”. The consecration took place on 1 May 2018 in Rome.

His Eminence defines his ministry in Italy as a “family” one and relies heavily on the closeness between the clergy and the faithful.

“I try to spend as much time as possible in the territory, that’s why I feel close to the priests, with whom I have a very good relationship. I was godfather to many at their ordination, some I trained with, others I trained and I think we are a real family”.

“This is what I would like in the future: to be a family, together to carry the achievements, but also the hardships. I would like us to be as responsible as we have been until now, that is, to work together for our salvation.”

Although he has been a bishop since 2018, His Eminence has served for ten years in the administration of the Diocese of Italy. “During the ten years of activity, much has been done materially, but the biggest achievement is that our churches are full, people love and seek the Church. That is why our responsibility is very, very big. But in the family everything goes together, both good and bad, to the glory of God”.

 

The Fall of the Western Empire: All Roads Lead to Kazan

According to the American-run Mediazona group, which no-one would ever accuse of being pro-Russian, the number of Russian deaths in the Ukrainian conflict is now nearly 73,000, with perhaps another 100,000 wounded and 6 deserters. This compares with 848,000 Ukrainian deaths and seriously wounded, with perhaps 1,000,000 less seriously wounded and over 80,000 deserters, let alone the millions who have run away abroad to avoid being press-ganged into the suicidal military who are dying in vain for the USA.

Ex-President Zelensky is now so desperate and delusional that he is blackmailing and bluffing NATO with the threat of using nuclear weapons. This threat is if NATO does not allow the Ukraine to join it and so if NATO countries are not obliged to participate in the US proxy war directly. This is an empty threat, because he does not have any nuclear weapons and cannot obtain them. And a NATO proxy war is by definition one in which NATO does not lose any troops.

As for the Western Empire with its plutocrat oligarchy, it is desperately trying to hold on in the Ukraine and the Middle East until the inauguration of the new US President in January 2025. They know that the war is lost. Even if they throw a few more billion dollars at the Ukraine, it will make no difference, as dollar bills do not win wars. Already a trillion dollars, which is what this futile conflict has so far cost the USA and Western Europe in subsidies and suicidal sanctions, has made no difference except to postpone the inevitable defeat of Kiev.

Only arms, munitions and soldiers make a difference. And there are very few of those left in the Ukraine, especially after the disastrous invasion of Russia’s historic Kursk province. This has already cost nearly 26,000 Ukrainian dead and seriously wounded and nearly 1,000 tanks, vehicles and artillery pieces. As for the NATO warehouses, they are almost empty, and NATO countries are unable in their very deindustrialised state to make arms and munitions. The casino player has little more to bet; the hand is lost. How can he leave the gaming table without losing face?

As for the Ukrainian regime, it is clearly a Fascist state which steals hundreds of churches from the faithful and allows its armed gangsters to lock them up so no-one can go in. No-one will go in. Whereas Russia has a military strategy, Kiev has only a PR strategy, Psyops, devised by US and UK PR companies which give out their lies to be parroted by the Western media. (As for Israel, it is bankrupt, its economy is in tatters and hundreds of thousands of Israelis are fleeing, especially to Cyprus, Greece and the USA. Who wants to live in Israel now?).

In fact, the plutocrat oligarchs are now facing their nightmare of a threefold defeat in the headlines: Russian troops greeted victoriously by masses of people lining the roads, as they liberate the Russian port of Odessa and Transdnistria and vigorous support shown for Russia all over north-east and south-east Europe, not only in Hungary and Slovakia; the Russian victory comes in establishing a New Ukraine in the north and west of the present Ukraine on the model of Belarus and with an independent Church; Iran shoots down over 50 Israeli warplanes and destroys Israeli bases and concentrations of armour and troops with its unstoppable hypersonic missiles; Chinese troops land in Taiwan and greeted as liberators by virtually all the (Chinese) people who live there and support for China shown throughout the Asia-Pacific.

The reality is that the US has $36 trillion of unpayable debt. This is more even than its official GDP, which in reality is far lower than that declared.  It has wasted $8 trillion on its forever wars which it has lost since 2003. It also has to finance some 750 military bases in 80 countries, not to mention CIA offices all over the world. Only US arms merchants and politicians benefit. The US can no longer afford to keep its colonies among the Global Majority, and will be obliged to abandon Israel, South Korea, Taiwan, just as it has had to abandon the Ukraine. It will have to evacuate Western Europe, which will finally have to sort itself out, dividing into four regions, the 21 countries of the north-west and south-west, and the many others in the north-east and south-east, close to Russia, which in this way become ready to join BRICS. The US will be left, at best, to concentrate on its crippled self.

Nine hundred years of Western colonisation, 450 years of colonial expansion to the peripheries of Europe, 450 years of colonial expansion outside Europe, and since 1945 decolonisation, first political and now at last real, that is, economic and geopolitical, have led to the present situation. The Western world is collapsing because it is harvest-time and the devil is dancing around it. The BRICS Summit in Kazan is not the beginning of the end of the Western Empire, but the ending of the end of that Empire.