Category Archives: Russian Church

The Turning-Point of 2025: The Self-Humiliation of the Western European Elite

Foreword: The Great Delusion

‘The West defeated Russia in the Cold War’. This is the greatest delusion and myth that the West has entertained since 1945. In 1992 the West deluded itself and thought that ‘history had ended’ in its own ‘victory’. In reality, the West never defeated Communism, rather Communism, having inevitably failed economically, turned into Nationalism, both Russian and Chinese. The fact that Marxist materialism failed, which had been predicted long before, does not mean that Capitalist materialism, greed for profit, would succeed. Marxism was wrong about Marxism, but it was right about Capitalism. Russia, freed from Communism, became State Capitalist, as it had been before the British regime-change of 1917, when it had already attained a 85% literacy rate and electrification and would have been the world’s greatest power by 1950. China too has returned as a Great Power, State Capitalist, as it had been until 1840.

Four Speeches and Vice-President Vance

Four speeches have marked my life because they were visionary. The first was the Peace Speech of President J. F. Kennedy in June 1963. Two months later came the famous Martin Luther King ‘I have a dream’ speech. The third is the Harvard Speech of Alexander Solzhenitsyn in June 1978 and the fourth was given outside the USA, by the American J.D. Vance in Munich just now, in February 2025. The last speech shook the elites of Western Europe, but was loudly applauded by ordinary Europeans, glad that someone was at last allowed to tell the truth in public and not get arrested by the more or less Fascist European ruling class. That ruling class remains feudal and its structure reflects the medieval ruling pyramid, header by the Pope, now replaced by the Infallible Ursula von der Leyen.

This fourth speech was when the US Vice-President, one who consciously chose to become a Roman Catholic and is a great supporter of the much-persecuted Ukrainian Orthodox Church, berated the Western European elite for its anti-democratic and anti-Christian practices. This speech marks the divorce between the USA and the militant and warmongering Western European elite which includes and sponsors the Ukrainian elite, but not, for example, the Hungarian and Slovak elites. The Ukrainian elite, backed by the Western European elite and led by Zelensky, is now blocking peace in the Ukraine. Trump recommends that Zelensky flee to France, so that peace can come there and so that the tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers, who are dying every month, will live.

Meanwhile, at the North-Western End of the Asian Peninsula

The North-Western Peninsula of Asia is called Europe and is just over 10 million square kilometres in area. The Eastern half of that Peninsula lies inside the three East Slav nations, which consist of the European part of Russia, the Ukraine and Belarus. The Western half of the Peninsula, divided into some 40 countries, lies outside those borders. However, the Eastern part of the Western half, with its many Slav peoples, is culturally closer to the Eastern half than to the Western part of the Western half. Thus, the far Western part, or quarter, of the Peninsula forms the 21 countries of what is the real ‘Western’ Europe. Those countries are populated by the Germanic peoples, mainly in the north, Romance peoples, mainly in the south, and small numbers of others, Celts, Basques and Maltese.

The one-thousand year period of the ‘Western European’ domination of the rest of the world, at first only of the Near East and Eastern Europe, which much expanded from 1492 on, is now over. The colonial empires of countries like Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium etc are finished. Only relics like Greenland, New Caledonia, Tahiti, the Falklands, Gibraltar are left. The USA and Russia have ended them and the future of the whole of the Western half of the Peninsula has been decided in Saudi Arabia, outside Western Europe, for it is now irrelevant. Its governing elite deserves this humiliation. How can the peoples of ‘Western Europe’ be supported after their elite’s defeat in this great geopolitical shift, a defeat which simply mirrors the defeat of the Soviet elite?

The Realistic People Versus the Ideological Elite

Today’s USA is run on realism, that Russia is a Great Power, whereas the Western European elite runs on ideology – ‘the West is Best’. Ideologies are always blind to reality because they try to fit reality into a mere ideology. This is why ideologies always break down. They are unrealistic. Such was the case with absurd Nazism and Marxism. Now it is the case with Western Imperialism. Realism shows us that Russia was a Great Power in 1914. The West then tried to destroy it five times. The first time was in 1914, the second time was in 1917, the third time was in 1941 and the fourth time was in 1991, the fifth time was in 2022. Each time the West failed. This time Great Power Russia has defeated not just the junta in Kiev, but all of NATO, which is now all but dead because the USA is leaving it.

Unlike Western Europe, the USA has a Constitution, which begins ‘We, the people…’. Therefore, the USA, founded by Europeans fleeing oppression, has at last been able to sideline the old, anti-democratic US elite, which was previously wholly supporting the treacherous, oppressive and authoritarian Western European regimes. Both elites promised the defeat of Russia, that its economy would be ruined and ‘the rouble would be turned into rubble’ and that the USA and Western Europe would, as the Nazi Eurocrats intended, break up Russia and seize and exploit its vast assets. Such fantasies could only have been expressed because the elites were living in a virtual world of fantasy narratives, of delusional wishful thinking, that is, of propaganda lies which they had persuaded themselves to be true.

EU/UK Hysteria

Reacting to Trump’s policy of actually talking to Russia, the hysterically Russophobic EU Commissariat is having a nervous breakdown. Just like Kiev, the EU cannot take part in any peace talks with Russia because the EU wants war. As for the Ukraine, it held ‘peace summits’ and refused to invite Russia, so why should the Ukrainian dictator be invited to future Russian-American peace talks? In any case. Kiev has still not rescinded the executive order of October 2022 which actually forbids it from peace talks with Russia. Now the authoritarian EU has just implemented its sixteenth package of sanctions against Russia! Surely if fifteen packages did not work after three years, a sixteenth will not either. All it will do is bankrupt EU countries even quicker. Such is their suicidal path.

As for the crazy idea of EU/UK peacekeepers in the Ukraine, why would Russia, which decides on this, as it holds all the cards, accept ‘peacekeepers’ from countries who are at war with it, economically at war and also supplying arms and mercenaries to the enemy side? And you certainly do not need peacekeepers, when you already have peace, as Trump promises. Why does the leadership of Britain and France want war and threaten interventions with non-existent troops? The British Army, just like the French, has twice as many horses as tanks, and its Navy has more admirals than ships. It is a fact. Another fact is that Alexandre de Rothschild runs the bank clerk figurehead Macron in France and shady figures in the City of London runs the figurehead of Starmer, who got the job because of his wife.

Towards International Peace

Both Starmer and Macron have now become prisoners of their own rhetoric and promises. Macron was clearly defeated in elections last year, but refused to resign despite the French people and the most popular Party, the National Rally. In the UK the new Sovereignist Reform Party, the British equivalent of the National Rally, now has 212,000 members, having overtaken the Conservative Party with 130,000 members on 26 December, and now heading to overtake the Labour Party within three months with its fast-declining 309,000 members. And Reform is headed by Trump’s best friend in Britain, Farage. Europe’s biggest former Imperialists, like the British, and the much-mocked liars of their media have yet to understand that the Unipolar, Westcentric world is over. And it really is.

When will the crazed Western European elite, centred among the unelected and overpaid Politbureau of Commissars in Brussels and the hated minority governments (both elected by 20% of the electorate) in London and Paris, all of which betrayed the genocided people in Eastern Ukraine, understand? As the elite will never stop believing in its own lies, it will have to be replaced by a new governing class, come up from the peoples of Western Europe and representing the peoples’ interests. Its first action should be the renewal of diplomatic ties with Russia and then the lifting of all suicidal sanctions against Russia, quashing the absurd criminal charges against the Russian President. Then it would need to support vital agreements such as those below, since the only real players support them.

Agreement In Europe

An overarching Eurasian Security Agreement needs to be reached. After the imminent regime-change in Kiev, which has been blocking peace, in this way peace can be reached for the New Ukraine in its new borders, probably governed by President Roman Medvedchuk without the warmongering dictator Zelensky. There must also be a stop to the nasty persecution of Russians who live in the Baltics. In return, the East Slavs will agree to stay within their borders in the eastern half of Europe, unless attacked again by the highly aggressive West, as has, unfortunately, so often happened, five times in the last eight generations. There must also be peaceful self-determination referenda in ex-Yugoslavia, which can be implemented once the Western world stops meddling there.

In this way, the EU and NATO, their sell-by dates expired long ago, exactly in 1992, can be collapsed. All their member-countries can then retrieve their sovereignty and their own currencies and form friendly and voluntary regional trading associations, if they so wish, also joining BRICS like normal countries Their hugely wasteful military budgets, standing on average at about 2% of GDP, could then be cut in half. They do not need armed forces; nobody wants to invade them – they are all bankrupt anyway. Together with the renewal of trade with Russia and the import once more of cheap energy, cereals and fertilisers from Russia, Western Europe could reindustrialise and renew its crumbling infrastructure, roads, railways, utilities, and social, health and educational systems.

Agreement Outside Europe

The USA should close down all its military bases and interests in all of the Eastern part of the Western half of Europe, in countries like Poland, the Baltic States, Czechia, Slovakia, Romania, Moldova, Bulgaria, Greece, Cyprus, ex-Yugoslavia and also in Germany and the Nordic countries. Similarly, it should close all its bases and clear out its occupying forces in Africa, the Caucasus, Central Asia, as well as in Japan and Thailand, where they have no reason to be and are not wanted. The US has its own sphere of interest – in Northern America. The return of the US military back home from Eurasia would help it stop the rise in its huge national debt of 36.5 trillion dollars, which is increasing by three million dollars every minute. The USA is bankrupt because of its attempt to rule all.

A war has been raging in West Asia, as the ‘Middle East’ is called in the West. The USA has to find a solution to the problems caused by its satellite, Israel. How can Israeli troops be removed from the Lebanon? How can the native people of Gaza live in conditions fit for human beings? When will Israeli persecution of the native people on the West Bank, which it occupies, cease? How can the bloodshed stop in what used to be Syria? The key here is perhaps in Russian guarantees to Iran. Beyond this, with Russian guarantees to North Korea, the US could withdraw its troops from South Korea. With Taiwan at last allowed to return to China, the US could be allowed by Russia and China to absorb Greenland and Canada, if their peoples accepted this by free referenda, as Russia has held in the Ukraine.

The Future and the Church

In the latest news, we can see the possible future of the old Soviet Ukraine, depending on referenda results. All the east and the south will pass to the Russian Federation, as will Transdnistria also. Most of North Bukovina (Chernovtsy) will return to Romania and possibly the small eastern part will go to Moldova in return for Gagauzia, if Gagauzia wishes to join the Russian Federation. Zakarpattia (Subcarpathian Rus or Ruthenia) will either go entirely to Hungary or else will be divided between Hungary and Slovakia, as before. As for the provinces of Lviv, Ivano-Frankivivsk and the western half of Ternopol, they will return to Poland. This would leave the New Ukraine, Kiyivska Rus, with the City of Kyiv, Kiyiv, Zhytomir, Rivne, Volyn, Cherkasy, Kirovohrad, Vinnytsia, Khmelnitskyi, and the eastern half of Ternopil.

In Church matters, surely there is only one solution. For the New Ukrainian/ Kiyivska Rus Church, to receive autocephaly, as also the Baltics (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland), should have their own Autocephalous Church. And Moldova must have its own autocephalous Moldovan Orthodox Church too, according to a Tomos signed jointly by Patriarch Kyrill of Moscow and Patriarch Daniel of Bucharest, as this is joint territory. If Moscow wanted one day to grant autocephaly to Belarus, that may happen. That would stop any uncanonical invasions of Russian canonical territory by the Patriarchate of Constantinople. It would also make twenty Local Orthodox Churches. Such decisions might at last bring a resolution to the long-standing uncanonical situation of the Diaspora.

Afterword

The Western European elite dinosaurs dwell in the past with its EU and NATO. They cling on to it, but the USA now looks to the future. There the generational shift has happened. This has exposed the corruption of USAID, of the National Endowment for ‘Democracy’, of the FBI and the CIA. The absurd Russiagate scandal will be exposed as a British attempt at regime-change in the US, covid as a Deep State error, as also the recent scandal of Epstein and the old one of the Kennedy assassination. Corrupt Western governments and their media are being exposed. Trump will save face by agreeing to the (Russian-created) New Ukraine and peace, declaring it as his victory. Let him. The future is clear – the Big Three, China, Russia and the USA, with a BRICS-composed Security Council and seats for the Big Three as for India, Africa, Brazil and Muslim Indonesia, and one seat for the ever-squabbling tribes of Europe. This is the future.

On the Third Anniversary of our Freedom from Persecution 2022-2025: The Thirteen Reasons Why We Took Canonical Refuge in the Romanian Orthodox Church after Nearly Fifty Years of Faithfulness to the Russian Orthodox Church

Blessed are you, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake (Matthew 5,11) 

Foreword

Although the statement below concerns the 5,000 of us directly, it could also be used as part of a more general study in order to understand the process of how a Persecuted Church became a Persecuting Church, how an organism for Love became a narrow and judgemental sect which professed Hatred which enjoys trying to close churches. It is a psychiatric tragedy.

Some Recent History

https://roarch.org.uk/parishes-england/

The Romanian Orthodox Church is not much bothered by PR and websites. It updates its website once every ten years. For some reason, this cyberworld information is highly important to newcomers, whereas the well-circulated photographs of our letter of acceptance of 16 February 2022, issued by the Chancellery of our Metropolia on 18 February 2022, and of our antimension, signed by Metropolitan Joseph and issued to our parish on 27 February 2022, and our belonging to the Romanian Orthodox Church, witnessed to by the multinational crowds following the litanies and the Great Entrance at every Divine Liturgy, are not adequate evidence of which Local Church we belong to!

The fact that a certain bishop broke his promise to a Metropolitan that he would issue letters of release and then told people publicly that we had not been received into the Romanian Orthodox Church, when we clearly had been, despite that bishop’s clerical maladministration, is on his conscience, not on ours. Similarly, the mistake of those who believed that ‘error’, without checking to find out the truth, and then supported and repeated that ‘error’, is also on their conscience, not on ours. Shall we be kind and just say that they had been misinformed? This is why we have had so many instances of myrrh-giving icons in our main church since the Feast of the Ascension in 2022, as has been recorded in our monthly newsletters. Our God is the God of Mercy and Justice.

Thus, at one fell swoop, a newcomer to ROCOR hounded out of it one of its largest families, 28 people of four generations, who had devoted their lives to ROCOR. The scandal became international, discrediting ROCOR. Among those expelled was one of the ten speakers of the 2006 Fourth All-Diaspora Council in San Francisco, whose speech had been so warmly greeted then and who had belonged to the Church before that newcomer was even born. However, since the newcomer had not belonged to ROCOR in 2006, but instead was then actively supporting a move by the Russian Church to join Constantinople, he would not know that.

None of this should be a surprise, since the New ROCOR had already excommunicated another of the ten speakers and yet another had left to join the Moscow Patriarchate. Seven to go. Who is next? How many more of the remaining faithful will be expelled by the New ROCOR for the ‘crime’ (that is what they called it) of remaining faithful to the Old ROCOR? They persecuted St John of Shanghai and Western Europe, suspended him and put him on trial. Why not do the same to his spiritual grandchildren as well?

It seems as though the New ROCOR is reneging on our long and hard-fought fight to enter back into canonical communion with the rest of the Russian Church, which culminated in our victory of 2007. With its history of support for Nazism in the 1930s and 1940s, support for the Vlasovtsy, those Russians who fought with Hitler against Russia, with its CIA bishops and priests, and now with their support for the CIA-orchestrated Kiev regime, which so persecutes Metr Onufry, should we be surprised? I am sometimes asked if I support Moscow or Kiev in the conflict in the Ukraine. I always answer the same thing: I support Metr Onufry and the Ukrainian and Russian peoples and always have done.

The Thirteen Reasons

  1. The principal reason why we were forced to leave and take refuge in the Romanian Orthodox Church, is simply so that we would no longer be in an unthinkable schism from the Russian Church, specifically from the Archdiocese of Western Europe of the Russian Tradition, in which we have had so many close family and friends in Paris for many decades. (It is also true that in the Romanian Church, we are no longer in schism with the Greek Churches either. We shall probably never recover from the shock of that bishop’s accusation that Patriarch Bartholomew is ‘possessed by demons’ Was he talking about himself?). His schism from the Russian Church, is exactly what we wanted to escape by taking canonical refuge in the Romanian Orthodox Church.

For nearly fifty years we had fought for the unity of the Russian Church, very actively and very successfully and were thanked personally by the Russian Patriarch for doing so. And then we saw it all destroyed by a very young and inexperienced convert newcomer from far away, who, a creator of schism, accused us of being schismatic and then of being senile! We have once more been able to live canonically, following the theological royal way and the canonical golden mean, away from all extremes.

For three years we have been in communion with and concelebrated with all Orthodox, including with the Russian Church, except for the tiny ROCOR, now reduced to a handful of miniscule communities here. Communion is the sign and guarantee that we are inside the Church and not outside the Church, inside some pathological, Protestant-style, convert sect and cult. For some reason this sect has been protected by ‘misinformed’, but still unrepentant and unapologetic individuals above it. That too is on their conscience, not on ours.

  1. In the Romanian Orthodox Church we do not rebaptise other Orthodox, which is a heresy.
  2. The Romanian Orthodox Church does not ‘defrock’ the clergy of other Local Churches.
  3. In the Romanian Orthodox Church we can love everyone, specifically we do not have to hate Greeks, refusing to recognise their saints because they are in ‘the wrong jurisdiction’!, ‘hate’ Russians, Ukrainians, Romanians and ‘half-hate’ Moldovans, as we were strongly recommended, but categorically refused, to do, for we strive to obey the Gospel commandments of Christ and not obey a schismatic.
  4. In the Romanian Orthodox Church over the last three years we have been able to keep all our churches open and serve our multinational parishioners in our missions at our own cost, just as we had done for decades before.
  5. For the last three years we have been allowed to speak and use in services our own childhood English language and do not have to pretend to be Americans in our speech, as we were bullied and pressured, but categorically refused, to do.
  6. For the last three years our websites have no longer been subject to rigid, word-for-word censorship and micromanagement, as we have had the wonderful basic human right to free speech, of which we had been punitively deprived for four months under a Calvinistically jealous dictatorship.
  7. For the last three years we have not had to participate in slandering faithful clergy and laypeople of other Local Churches, which we categorically refused to do.
  8. We have no longer had to deal with one who suffered in his spoilt child syndrome from violent bouts of temper and jealousy and wanted to divide and destroy solid families, setting generation against generation and hating women and children, upsetting many women with his ugly remarks.
  9. We have no longer had to pay 10% of our income and be subjected to fits of rage, shouting that we must pay even more and also hear slanders that we are thieves, all so that someone could live like a mini-oligarch. Membership of our self-governing Romanian Orthodox Metropolia of Western Europe and its local Archdiocese is free.
  10. We have no longer belonged to a small, out-of-control group, which is faced with having to pay millions of dollars in court cases which it is losing to individuals whom it has slandered, and which is also sundered by multiple scandals concerning rebaptism of other Orthodox, ‘defrocking’ clergy of other Local Churches, lack of financial transparency, the use of electronic signatures without authorisation, alcoholism and homosexuality.
  11. We have no longer had to live under an oppressive system where priestly awards are deliberately withheld from the most senior clergy for many, many years, for reasons of sadistic hatred and bullying jealousy, as though we were donkeys who wanted to follow decorative carrots.
  12. We have been allowed to be Christians, free to keep our integrity and obey our conscience. We have been able to act according to our Orthodox Christian principles, as for nearly fifty years before, in the old and noble Western European ROCOR Tradition of St John of Shanghai and Western Europe, which they have all but destroyed, except inside the Romanian Orthodox Church, where we faithfully conserve it. This freedom comes from the fact that our Romanian bishops are, like us, also Christians, and do not punish or persecute us.

Why to the Romanian Orthodox Church?

Some people ask us, all the 15 clergy and 5,000 people in our six parishes who left ROCOR because it refused to listen to us about its schism, punished us for telling them the truth about it, and refused to listen to us who endured this shameful betrayal of the best friends that the Russian Church has ever had, why we joined the Romanian Church specifically. The answer to this is simple:

The Greek Church of the Patriarchate of Constantinople was for us not an option, despite some wonderful clergy and people there, not least on Mt Athos, as certain members of its episcopate had compromised themselves through their uncanonical actions in the Ukraine and through their ecumenism. Joining the Greek Church would therefore have been very divisive among our flock. As for the Serbian Church, we greatly respect it, as we do all other Local Churches, but we did not think of joining any of them, as we could have done, because we do not have any direct connections with their bishops, only with their priests.

There was only one obvious solution, the Romanian Church. We have always valued our contacts with the Romanian Tradition of Life via Fr Raphael Noica and others. Since 2001 we have had Romanian parishioners and these have increased in number since. As a result, we had a Romanian parishioner ordained priest and a Moldovan parishioner ordained deacon some years ago. We are pastors, not nationalists, and are here to serve the Orthodox people, whatever their nationality, English, Russian, Ukrainian, Moldovan, Romanian or other.

We do not conduct passport checks at the door. Perhaps that is why the number of our parishioners of all nationalities has doubled in the last three years since we left ROCOR. Nor are we capitalists, who sell vastly overpriced candles, icons, prayer books and other Church items to their own, often poor, people. We run the cheapest Church shop in the country. It is a service, not a source of excessive profit. We do not exploit the Orthodox people.

In the last 12 years 1 million Romanians have come to live in this country. Today at least 70% of all Orthodox in this country are Romanians. Go to any church in this country and the children are almost certain to be Romanian. Children are our future. And young priests have been temporarily loaned by the Romanian Church to the Patriarchates of Constantinople and Antioch, which are both desperately short of young clergy.

Moreover, the Romanian bishops have a clear pastoral sense of how important it is to keep the children in the Church and are very happy to use the local languages to do so. All our bishops speak Western European languages fluently – unlike most Russian bishops. Clearly, if we believe in a future Local Church, as we always have done, it makes sense to be part of by far the largest group of Orthodox, as long as it is politically free, which was the case of very few Local Churches 35 years ago, but which is no longer the case today, except for two of them.

It also makes sense to belong to a Local Church which allows us to conserve the Tradition and calendar of the Old Western European ROCOR, as we are able. The view of the late Metr Kallistos (Ware) ten years ago was quite rightly that ROCOR’s ascetic and liturgical heritage should be valued. Sadly, it has been ignored by them and taken over by ritualism and the pharisaical condemnation of others, turning this heritage into an opportunity for even further spiritual pride and censoriousness. As for us, we keep to the saints of the Old ROCOR of the Confessors, like St John of Shanghai, whom they now condemn, as he did not dress in expensive clothing and footwear and did not live in an elite apartment.

In 2022 we left the Russian Church to its nationalism, where the earthly kingdom is higher than the heavenly kingdom and Caesar’s is tragically confused with God’s. It has indeed renounced the multinational ethos which it had in the past. Too bad for it. We pray that Moscow, like Constantinople, will recover. Providentially we were integrated into the Romanian Orthodox Church exactly eight days before the longstanding Ukrainian-Russian conflict reached a new level of militancy on 24 February 2022. Thus, we avoided the Russian-Ukrainian division and so were able to answer all the threats of violence and hatred that were sent to us after that date, as well as the unnecessary offer of police protection, as well as invitations to support the Nazis in Kiev, by simply answering that we in the Romanian Orthodox Church have nothing to do with internal conflicts and politics inside the Russian Church.

With the result that our many Russian and Ukrainian parishioners can and do pray for one another side by side. Precisely from within the Romanian Orthodox Church, the second largest Local Church and which speaks a Latin language and uses the Latin alphabet, we can perhaps play a role in healing the schism between Russians and Greeks, which stems from the fact that neither is politically free. We are neutral. For we are pastors, not politicians.

We recall how the Greeks started the schism in the Ukraine by opening churches on Russian canonical territory. Then the Russians made it worse, firstly by cutting off communion, a very radical act which made the Russian Church look schismatic, then by poaching churches, priests and people from the Greek jurisdiction without letters of release, and then, in revenge, by opening churches on Greek canonical territory in Africa. This is like two little boys fighting. When will this end?

Afterword

Can we, in concert with the other politically free Local Churches, be intermediaries and help to bring sense and peace, in the spirit of the catholicity of the whole Orthodox Church? We pray so, through the prayers of all the New Martyrs and Confessors, of the Russian, Ukrainian, Romanian and Greek Lands and of all the Lands of the Earth.

16 February 2025

From Recent Correspondence: The Secret is Out!

Dear Father Andrew,

It’s been a long time since we last spoke or saw each other. I was engrossed in my own journey that requires a face-to-face meeting to share.

In these strange and challenging times, I currently work between Moscow, X, and (to a lesser extent) London. I planned to reach out to you when I am next in the UK.

Throughout this time, the memories of our few meetings and your work in the Orthodox Church have remained cherished treasures in my heart. I often revisit your Orthodox England website, sharing the link with those I believe might be interested.

Yesterday, I intended to browse through your ‘Orthodox England’ book online. On searching for you on Google, I came across the news three years ago of your departure from the “jurisdiction.” This development didn’t come as a surprise, given the current state of affairs within the Church and the world…..

 

Dear Z,

We are all very well.

Our Orthodox England site is very active and still very popular. The book, The Orthodox Faith and the English Tradition, is now fully online, under Resources on the website: http://www.orthodoxengland.org.uk/oe4/e-books/. Our story is quite simple, though quite shocking, as it concerns corruption in high places inside the Russian Church.

In 2017, exactly ten years after the now American, but once Russian émigré, group entered into canonical communion with the Moscow Patriarchate in 2007, it was infiltrated by the CIA. This was not surprising to me, as it had already been infiltrated by the CIA as far back as the 1960s, under the then Fr George (later Bp Gregory) Grabbe. However, after the fall of the USSR in 1991, the CIA abandoned it, as it had no more interest in it, and the CIA stopped giving money to it. ‘Mission accomplished’ for them, as they said at that time. However, by 2017 the time to infiltrate again had begun.

When I spoke at the émigré Church Council in San Francisco in May 2006, it was attended by the former US ambassador to Kiev, the notorious neocon John Herbst, who lost his job in Kiev on 26 May 2006. I overheard him saying to one bishop in Russian (he thought I could not understand him), that ‘they would have to do something about the ROCOR decision to rejoin Moscow’, taken at the 2006 Council. The CIA duly subsidised a crazy man who lives in Odessa and calls himself Metropolitan Agafangel (not the canonical and real Metr Agafangel). But that was only the start.

It all went much further than that. In 2017 the CIA infiltrated the now American group in the hope of destroying it and so harming the whole Russian Church. So, in 2017 they tasked someone with destroying the Church here. He did this by creating a schism with Moscow.

Now we had been working successfully for Russian Church unity for nearly 50 years, so his schism went against the work of a lifetime, so they had to persecute us and try and close all our churches. So we went to try and join the local Moscow bishop. To our astonishment, he refused to take any of us, 15 clergy, 6 parishes and 5,000 people. Now he is a nice man and he let us know that his refusal was on orders from Moscow.  So we think that the Church in Moscow itself has been infiltrated by the CIA. After all, there are people there who will do anything for money. The recent scandal with that Metropolitan proves it.

Today the now American group is beset by scandals which it created, not only here, but also in the USA. Worse still, under CIA pressure, after 2022 it openly took the Western side in the US-Russia proxy war in the so deeply tragic Ukraine. In that way it lost a lot of its Russian base. Russians were understandably scandalised by the new anti-Russian, pro-American standpoint, and without attracting any Ukrainians, who go to their own churches and do not want anything to do with Russians. As the American group is dying out as a consequence of its not merging into the structures of the Russian Church, it is now desperately trying to recruit converts. However, as it is a schismatic and sectarian group, it has problems attracting normal people, but quite often extremists or fanatics with pathological problems, for instance, unstable young men who dislike women or homosexuals.

In any case, three years ago, before the SMO, we joined the Romanian Orthodox Church, who have been wonderful to us. Here we continue exactly as before, only without corruption, without schism and without the CIA. We are getting to the point here, where there are more Russian Orthodox outside the Russian Church than inside it, because of the corruption inside it.

Regrets and Hopes in 2025

Q: In the New Year we tend to look both forwards and backwards. Can you tell us what regrets you have about the past? And what hopes do you have for the future?

A: I have three regrets, but a hope that far outweighs them all!

My first regret is the killing off of the Western European Archdiocese of ROCOR. We always used to concelebrate with everyone, with Constantinople, with the Serbs etc. We also had parishes on the new calendar with us. There was no problem with any of this and we were pleased to live like this. This was our tradition of being on good terms with all the Local Churches, faithfully handed down to us without change from pre-Revolutionary Russia. It used to be the norm for the whole Russian Church.

However, the ever-memorable Archbishop Antony of Geneva, who ordained me and whose spiritual child I am, was attacked by sectarians from the USA for keeping to this tradition, just as his predecessor, Archbishop John (Maximovich), was suspended and put on trial by those very same CIA-financed sectarians in the USA. There are narrow and racist, politically-minded pharisees, who cannot tolerate openness to other nationalities, unlike St John and his successor.

In 2007 we finally defeated the US fanatics, we ‘drained the swamp’, as they say, and brought ROCOR back into canonical communion with the rest of the Russian Church. However, ten years later, the CIA, working hard through its Cold War-founded select but powerful network of clerical agents in New York and elsewhere – their names are well-known to us, for many of them were recruited long ago – subverted our victory. They did this by having collected ‘dirt’ on individuals (they especially like to recruit homosexuals, who are then compromised and in debt to them), for, as they like to say, ‘every man has his price’, often literally. In this way they infiltrated the Church and created what they had long wanted – sectarianism and schism.

I realise that the New York group was desperate to find bishops, but there is a minimum level. They should exclude CIA agents by thoroughly vetting and training candidates for the episcopate in seminary and monastery, and also exclude homosexuals, narcissists and money grubbers, before they consecrate anyone. The liturgical, historical and legal ignorance of the CIA generation of recruits should not be such that they get arrested twice in one day in two different countries! Candidates should also understand the canons, especially those of the First and Second Council under St Photios. And they should also be equipped linguistically, which is so important in Europe. Communication by google translate has made a laughing-stock of that jurisdiction.

Then came the shock of 2017, a very recent convert, knowing little apart from American culture, which he tried to impose on everyone together with his American language. This was teaching your grandmother to suck eggs. Lacking all respect for local traditions, the new convert made nasty racist attacks on all Orthodox nationalities, Russians, Ukrainians, Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbs, Romanians and Moldovans, demanded ever more money at every stop, persecuted the faithful, tried to close our churches, flew off into hateful rages, insisted on ‘protocols’ and micromanaged bureaucracy, and set himself up as a guru, just like the invaders of Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan had done before him. ‘I’m American, I know everything and you owe me complete obedience’. That was the attitude. There is nothing Christian in any of this, just neophyte arrogance.

In December 2020 he went into schism. That was the last straw for all of us. Despite his guru claims, he was not followed. Clergy in Western Europe ignored him and continue to concelebrate with others, including with the Moscow Patriarchate, from which he had also gone into schism. But for us who have always fought against sectarianism, this was the end. We will ever uphold the traditions of St John of Shanghai and Western Europe and of his successor Archbishop Antony of Geneva, who would have supported us. We will never, on principle, support schism and sectarianism. As St John Chrysostom said: ‘The sin of schism cannot be washed away even by the blood of martyrdom’. We pray for him that he will repent before the end.

My second regret is that so much time has been wasted by others. I have been held back. I could have done so much more, but was not allowed to, for reasons of racism, jealousy and politics. I hope I have a long life because there is so much more to do towards building the Local Church of Western Europe. Thirty-six hours a day would not be enough. Parishioners are praying for me that I live to 100. They want me to baptise their grandchildren. Of course, maybe I won’t live until next week, I don’t choose. As God wills.

My third regret is that the Moscow Church administration, with all its vast potential, fell into exactly the same nationalist and racist trap as the Greek Church administration. It began to exclude Non-Russians, not just Ukrainians, but even their own children, from their once multinational Church, despite the warnings of my dear friend, the late Fr Vsevolod Chaplin, who died in mysterious circumstances in Moscow in 2020, aged just 52. This ‘Russian world’ concept is exactly the same racism as Hellenist nationalism. They have lost everyone outside themselves, Ukrainians, Moldovans, those from the Baltics, those from Western Europe, isolating themselves from the mainstream, just like the Greeks.

As a result, the responsibility for building the Local Church of Western Europe has fallen to the Romanians, together with the old calendar, Russian-speaking Moldovans and those of other nationalities, including canonical Russians, who are likeminded, like ourselves. Will we manage to do it, overcoming nationalism, keeping our hundreds of thousands of Western European-born Romanian and Moldovan children in the Church through a new Local Church? We shall do our best to do so.

And this is my great hope, far greater than all these details of history, that I shall live to see our Local Church emerge from the hundreds of thousands of Orthodox children, not just Romanian and Moldovan, but those of many other Eastern European nationalities and of those whose ancestors have lived in Western Europe for generations and centuries, including our own six children, six sons and daughters-in-law, and twelve grandchildren so far.

Thus, we hold firmly to the tradition of the Western European diocese of ROCOR, of the pre-Revolutionary Russian Church. Nothing will be lost. This year we have an important project towards this. It is all under way and hopefully it will be completed and revealed before the end of 2025. Unity, not sectarian schism, is the way forward and that is our way and always has been!

Thank God for the Romanian Church. Through our Church we have been able to keep Russians and Ukrainians together (only a few nationalistic and ritualistic Muscovites did not stay with us), just before their conflict hotted up on 24 February 2022, not to mention Moldovans, Romanians and others. I know that we are very grateful to Metr Joseph and he is grateful to us, as he wants to build a multinational Church. In a few days’ time our new Archbishop Athanasy, a Russian-speaking Moldovan, will be enthroned for us. Glory to God!

 

On the Present Divisions in the Russian Orthodox Church on Account of the Ukraine

Foreword

We have never had the slightest doubt that the Russian Federation, one of the World’s four Superpowers and the fourth largest economy in the world, would emerge militarily victorious in the conflict in the Ukraine. It is common sense, its military-industrial base is far greater than that of the Collective West and its military technology is far ahead of the Western, which is stuck at least one generation behind in the 1990s, as shown by its burning backward tanks in Russia and the Ukraine. On top of that, it is supported by the whole Non-Western world, including China, India, Africa and Latin America, all who have been and are victims of Western colonialism and exploitation – nearly 90% of the planet. The West has isolated itself through its crimes. The Western defeat in the Ukraine, which is rapidly on its way, is Divine chastisement for its hubris and all its crimes over the centuries, not least its recent genocides in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and the Ukraine.

However, this common sense does not mean that we rejoice in any of this profound tragedy or Russia winning the war. Will Russia win the peace? At least a million men are dead or maimed in the Ukraine. All are victims of international politics, above all the victims are the poor Ukrainians, whom the racist Americans and the Western European elite want to see killed ‘until the last Ukrainian’. Now they want to murder even those Ukrainians between the ages of 18 and 25. However, as we have said from the outset, another great loser will be the once multinational Russian Orthodox Church, which has lost its Ukrainian flock and others by descending into Russian nationalist politics and cutting itself off from communion with the corrupt hierarchy of the Church of Constantinople. All seem to have forgotten that we are pastors, not politicians and we have no interest in power and money. Their punishment is coming. As the proverb says: Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.

Introduction: The Conflict in the Ukraine

The very tragic conflict in the Ukraine has especially since 2022 caused divisions in the Russian Church outside the Ukraine. (I do not speak of the divisions that it has caused inside the Ukraine – they are all too obvious).

For: Patriots?

On the one hand, there are the Conservatives (for want of a better word), who fully support the armed conflict, which has already created over a million victims, killed and wounded. Many of these, on both sides, are formally baptised, in the same Russian Orthodox Church. Nevertheless, the views of the Conservatives, shared, it seems, by all the bishops and most of the priests inside Russia, though not by all of them in Western Europe and the USA, are that this is an operation to defend the Russian Federation and Russians in the east and south of the Ukraine from American-led NATO and Neo-Nazi Ukrainian aggression from the Kiev puppet government. Therefore, Russian actions are justified. Indeed, they claim that Russian actions are simply defending threefold Orthodox East Slavdom, Holy Rus (the Russian Federation, the Ukraine and Belarus), from Western evils like atheism and transgenderism, like that of the 1916 murderer and traitor Yusupov.

Those who support the Conservatives proclaim that the latter are sincere Christians and good pastors, who are just defending Russia against its God-less Western enemies. Those against the Conservatives consider them to be cruel, heartless, anti-Christian, divisive and politically-motivated. How can they, especially as clergy, be in favour of destruction, war and death? What about: ‘Thou shalt not kill’? They consider that the supporters of the Russian forces are mercenary and murderous hirelings of an aggressive Russian government, and that they will do whatever the Russian State wants, that they have no Christian conscience. Their argument is supported by the fact that the Russian Orthodox Church is, or rather, used to be, the Church of all Russian Orthodox and all canonical Ukrainian Orthodox, that it used to be multinational. Therefore, to support one national side against another is to divide the flock of the Church, introducing a civil war into the Church. Is that Christian?

Against: Traitors?

On the other hand, there are the Liberals (for want of a better word), who are opposed to the conflict and demand the withdrawal of Russian forces from the Ukraine. These include the clergy of the former Russian parish in Amsterdam and in Madrid (all of them linked to the late liberal Metr Antony (Bloom)), and a well-known archpriest and protodeacon from Moscow, now in exile in Western Europe. They, and several others, have all been ‘defrocked’ by the Moscow Patriarchate for disagreeing with the ‘Party line’ (See Note 1) and so joined the Patriarchate of Constantinople – Moscow’s US-financed rival. But they had nowhere else to go. Others, bishops of the Russian-American Synod in New York have also called on Russia to withdraw its troops. The anti-Russian attitudes of such bishops, who are American citizens, are not surprising. In the past, they had at least one CIA-agent bishop and until 1991 subsidies from the CIA. Why should they not accept subsidies again?

Those who are against the conflict are said to be sincere Christians and good pastors. Those who support the conflict consider those against to be political traitors. In effect, those against the conflict are supporting Russia’s enemies, the Western Powers, led by the USA. They tell those who are against the conflict to visit the Avenue of the Angels monument in Donetsk, where 400 children murdered by Ukrainian/US shells between 2014 and 2022 are buried, together with nearly 14,000 adult civilian victims. Also, they point out that most of the ‘Russian’ troops fighting in the Ukraine are Ukrainians anyway – Russian-speaking inhabitants of the eastern and southern Ukraine, who are fighting for their right to speak their native language and attend their Orthodox Church, which is sorely persecuted by Kiev. Since they are Ukrainians, how can they withdraw from their own country? Here is the essence of the tragedy – this is the worst sort of war – a civil war.

The Third Way

Those who are for the conflict seem to support Russian nationalism and militarism, those who are against the conflict seem to support US globalism and secularism. It is clear that neither of these extremes can be supported. We support the Third Way. This says that the Church should not take sides in a conflict between secular States, the Russian Federation and the USA, both of which have, for example, very high rates of abortion and divorce, suffer from weak family life and have very low levels of Church attendance. We should act as pastors, not politicians, as Christians, not as secularists. Our secular passport may say Russian or Ukrainian, but our spiritual passport says Orthodox Christian. This is our heavenly nationality, over all that is earthly. We should pray not for ‘victory’, but for ‘peace’. It seems to us that the Russian Orthodox hierarchy in Moscow should grant the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church full independence.

If independence, or autocephaly, is what the canonical Ukrainian Church needs in order to stop persecution, even if only temporarily, let it have it. The Church does not put power above peace and money above love. Sadly, we must admit that the conflict in the Ukraine has highlighted that many, on both sides, have done the opposite, playing politics. For them there is only power and money, not peace and love. The example of St Nicholas of Japan (+ 1912) should be followed. During the Japano-Russian War of 1904-05, as the Russian bishop of Japan and founder of the Japanese Orthodox Church, he lived as a recluse in prayer, telling his Japanese flock to pray for the Japanese authorities, as the Apostle Paul instructs us. And then he fell silent for the duration. Why do the Church authorities in Moscow not do the same today? We also have the example of St Silvanus the Athonite (+ 1938), who during the First World War simply prayed that the least evil side win.

Conclusion: Towards Healing

Here are the examples that we may follow, praying that the present grave divisions inside the Russian Church and those between it and other Local Orthodox Churches may be overcome.

Note:

  1. ‘Defrocking’ for political reasons is utterly uncanonical and is ignored by all sixteen Local Orthodox Churches, including the Romanian Orthodox Church, the Church of Constantinople and the Russian Church. Thus, one part of the Russian Church freely receives ‘defrocked’ clerics from the Church of Constantinople, as well as, in the past, many from the Patriarchate of Moscow. Constantinople received hundreds of ‘defrocked’ Ukrainian clerics in the 1990s and has received others more recently. The Romanian Church has received over 200 ‘defrocked’ clerics in Moldova and in England from the Russian Church, who had been ‘defrocked’ because they had been persecuted by their bishops. As one Russian Moscow bishop told me about another bishop who had carried out such actions: ‘Send for the psychiatric ambulance to pick him up’! What always happens after such ‘defrockings’ is always ‘refrockings’, when meaningless pieces of paper, written against the Holy Spirit, often still in their unopened envelopes, are simply cancelled.

On Metr Antony (Bloom) and Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov)

Q: You are one of the few people who knew well both Metr Antony (Bloom) and Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov). What do you think of them and their disputes?

A: I am not sure that I am one of the few, but I did know them both well.

The future Metr Antony was born on the same day as my grandfather, though twenty years after him. He was a typical Franco-Russian intellectual. He was very gifted, very open, to the point of liberalism, and very sincere. His father, Boris, was an Imperial diplomat who was interested in the occult and had the gift of hypnotism. His mother was the sister of the ‘mystical’, but very unOrthodox Russian composer Scriabin.

Andrei Bloom (as he then was) came to the faith in his teens and lived it in his own way. He did not study at seminary. He was completely unmercenary and lived very modestly. His interests were intellectual and in people and was very popular, especially among women. He was widely read in Western literature, but not so much in the Church Fathers or the literature of piety and the Lives of the Saints. He was really quite emotional and you can hear this in his sermons. His approach to the Faith was emotional, even sentimental, and cultural. That approach is very important to some.

Fr Sophrony was eighteen years older than Metr Antony and came from a well-off Russian family in Moscow, emigrated to France after the Revolution and was a huge intellectual, philosopher and artist who had belonged in his youth to the Art Nouveau Movement. He came to England in 1959, when a large property was given him by the Church of England in an ecumenical spirit. At that time he was still living in France, where for some 14 years he had been under the Patriarchate of Moscow after he had been expelled from Mt Athos. He had lived there for twenty years and was expelled by the Greek authorities for political reasons, together with two other Russian monks.

In 1965 he left the jurisdiction of Metr Antony of Moscow after twenty years and returned to the jurisdiction of Greek Constantinople. This happened after he had fallen out with Metr Antony, who wanted to close his monastery and ordain his priests, so he could expand his tiny diocese. Fr Sophrony (as we always called him – never starets) is now a local saint, canonised by the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and venerated in the monastery, or convent, which he founded just outside a village in the east of Essex.

So we can see that Metr Antony had an emotional approach to the Faith and is very attractive to the emotional and even sentimental, especially to women, and brought tens of thousands of Russians and others to Orthodoxy. On the other hand, Fr Sophrony had an intellectual and philosophical approach to the Faith and he is attractive to highly educated people of many nationalities, many of whom have doctorates, like his monks.

Thus, they were very different people. But both played a positive role. The point is that everyone is different and there is no reason to reject or condemn either of them, as some do. Having said that, neither was my ‘cup of tea’ personally. But so what? There is room in the Church for many different sorts of people and many sorts of people are needed. Let us not be narrow! Tastes vary.

We can see this in the views of other Orthodox. For example, the then Fr Vitaly (Ustinov), later Metropolitan of ROCOR, called, I think in 1948, the then Fr Antony (Bloom) ‘a priest of Satan’, simply because he belonged to the Patriarchate of Moscow, which had been revived by Stalin. However, we know that Metr Vitaly ended his life outside the Church in a sect. Metr Antony (Bloom) did not.

Another critic, and of both the ‘Western’ Metr Antony and of the ‘delusional’ Fr Sophrony (according to Professor Osipov), is the Russian academic, Professor A. I. Osipov. His lectures are interesting for beginners in Orthodox life and he was very popular, especially in the 1990s when 100 million Russians were baptised, virtually without instruction. Once more, he is just another personality, with his own approach, a third approach, that of the academic.

All three approaches are interesting, but I don’t see why they should be mutually exclusive. However, once more he is not my personal cup of tea. But he is the cup of tea of many others. People are different! Accept that everyone is different and stop falling into that trap of sectarian narrowness and condemnation that some Russians can be inclined to, with their cries of ‘That’s uncanonical’, ‘you’re a schismatic’, ‘that’s heretical’ etc. None of that is Christian. Moreover, it is this Russian intolerance that has caused the schism between Russians and Greeks today, all the purely political divisions in the Russian emigration (meaning that today ROCOR is out of communion with the Western European Archdiocese of the Russian Church), and all the divisions inside Russia from the seventeenth century until today, Sad.

On Delusions: Western, Ukrainian, Russian and Clerical

For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom…and the stars shall fall from heaven…

Matt. 24

Introduction

The appalling conflict in the Ukraine marks a turning-point in world history. The choice offered by it is between transnational Globalism, which could lead to the eventual enthronement of Antichrist, or else National Sovereignty, which may be healthier, but brings many of its own violent dangers and nationalist temptations. The battleground and victim of this struggle is the tragic Ukraine, a country composed of different peoples, thrown together in the same geographical space by the tyrants of the twentieth century, and whose views and beliefs contradict one another, and who are now killing one another.

As one commentator has put it: ‘They are all Orthodox, but none are Christians’. When will it all end? We have finally discovered the true form of the prophecy of Elder Iona of Odessa (+ 2012) (the first part is often omitted) who said the following: ‘There will be a cold Easter, a hungry Easter, a bloody Easter and a victorious Easter’. It seems he was referring to 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025. Many misinterpret the last part of the prophecy, misunderstanding that a victorious Easter means a ‘Russian victory’. It does not. It means peace, for the only victory is peace, when Ukrainian and Russian alike will repent and help one another.

The Western Delusion

Meanwhile, senior bishops of the Russian Moscow Patriarchate are criticised by Western politicians and journalists and their Russian liberal servants, some of them traitors or who are CIA-paid, for spreading the nationalist, ‘Russian world’ ideology. This promotes the unity of the Russian-speaking world, regardless of where it may be, inside or outside the Russian Federation. However, in truth, this is no more nationalist than the ideology of Hellenism, which has been spread for generations by the Greek Patriarch of Constantinople. And yet none of the liberals denounces the Greek nationalists or calls them ‘heretics’ – as the Greeks and the liberals call the Russians! Strange, because they are exact equivalents with exactly the same exclusivist, racist and nationalist ramifications.

This ‘Russian world’ ideology means the nationalisation of the formerly multinational Moscow Patriarchate, excluding Non-Russians, just like Hellenism, which excludes Non-Greeks. This clearly means that Russia has no interest in invading Non-Russian countries, like Moldova, the Baltics, or the western, that is, truly Ukrainian, part of the Ukraine. Russia today is nationalist, not imperialist. This totally contradicts the absurd Western ‘narrative’ that ‘Russia wants to invade’ the rest of Non-Russian Europe further west, re-establishing the failed Soviet Empire. Never has any Russian official said such a thing, indeed quite the opposite – nobody wants to repeat the clear failure of the Soviet Union, ‘only someone without a brain wants it back’, as President Putin has said.

This Western narrative of Russian imperialism contradicts the other Western propaganda myth that ‘the Russians have no more fuel, shells, tanks, missiles, artillery, soldiers etc’, ‘the people do not want to fight’, and ‘Putin is dying of a serious illness’ and more recently that, ‘North Korean troops are fighting in Russia because so many Russians have died in ‘human waves of cannon fodder’’. We have heard all this propaganda, most of it dating back to World War II, for nearly three years, without the slightest proof of any of it, indeed everything points to exactly the opposite. It has to be one, the Russians are going to take over the whole of Europe, or the other, the Russians are exhausted, defeated and have nothing left. In fact, it is of course neither. Both are clearly lies.

The Ukrainian Delusion

The great Western delusion is centred on the Ukraine. The old Ukraine was the artificial creation of three Soviet tyrants, Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchov, between 1922 and 1954, set up so that it could be controlled all the more easily by those tyrants. Before that, the nineteenth-century Austrian-invented ‘Ukraine’, or Malorossija, to give it its real historic name, existed, but only in what is now the north-west of the present Ukraine, centred around and to the west of Kiev. As we have been saying for years, the future of the Soviet Ukraine would be to divide it into three parts. A Russian part, a Ukrainian part and another part, which could, conditionally, be given back to three neighbouring countries – Poland, Hungary and Romania. Only the details of such partitions are not clear.

For example, the Russian part could consist of at least six provinces or administrative areas (two in the Crimea). These have largely already been taken back by Russian forces, but there could be another four or even seven provinces in the east and south of the old Soviet Ukraine which might wish to go back to Russia. The Ukrainian part could include between eighteen and a half and eleven and a half provinces and areas out of the original twenty-seven. This part would be centred around Kiev, the north and west of the old Soviet Ukraine. Two and a half western provinces could return to Poland (Lviv, Ivanofrankivsk and the southern part of Ternopil – the northern part, called Kremenets, with the Pochaev Lavra, would rejoin Volyn/Rivne, where it was in 1939).

One province (Zakarpat’e, or properly Subcarpathian Rus) would go back to Hungary and one (Chernovtsy, or properly North Bukovina). would go back to Romania. The return of the areas to Poland would be conditional on their deNATOisation. As regards the Hungarian area, the Russian Church could then establish a Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Church for it, its territory including all Austro-Hungary. This would right the historic injustice of their Austro-Hungarian persecution. As regards the Romanian area, the conditionality could depend on Moldovan deNATOisation and on Transdnistria, Gagauzia and any other border areas of Moldova wishing by referendum to pass to Russian control being allowed to do so. The Russian world would thus respect the Romanian world.

The Russian Delusion

The conflict in the Ukraine has highlighted the underlying division between the clerico-administrative layer and the leftist-intellectual layer of the Russian Orthodox Church as a whole. This division is in fact between the pro-Catholic Conservative and the pro-Protestant Liberal layers in the Church. The first, the Conservatives, rule in Moscow, where politicians have replaced pastors and managers have replaced monks. The Conservative administrators are composed of such mini-oligarchs, who promote a militarised – and militant – Church, and propose admirals and generals as saints. They forget that before the Revolution people spoke of the worst bishops as ‘good administrators’ and then there was a Revolution. Now they speak of ‘effective managers’ (see Note 1 below).

So now there is a war in the Ukraine – the clear result of ‘effective management’. Nothing has changed. However, if there is to be no Revolution this time, there must first be a great cleansing of the Church, by the grace of God, through the coming Tsar. Now the ‘princes of the Church’ are proposing a ’Church’ which looks like a cross between folklore and an army – superstitious magic ritualism for women and Stalinist militaristic nationalism for men. That would be a Church which could only attract the brainless. We saw the ‘princes’ at the time of the ‘covid’ plot. The episcopate in Russia, closely followed by that outside Russia closed churches! It is something that even the Communists did not achieve so well. This was the persecution of the people of the Faith by bishops of little faith.

Then came the conflict in the Ukraine. The Liberals of Public Orthodoxy, including the sincere but very naïve Sergei Chapnin, Fr Alexei Uminsky, Fr Andrei Kordochkin are one thing. But many anti-Russian Liberals are, directly or indirectly CIA-funded, indirectly allied to the USA and sometimes to its vassals in Constantinople. Many anti-patriots think they are against the war, for they do not realise that they are for the war, but for the war of the Western elite against the Russian Federation. Both the Conservatives and the Liberals propose a Religion, but not Faith, a State manipulation, whether of the Russian State or of the American State, not the life in the Holy Spirit. Neither the pro-Catholic Conservatives, nor the pro-Protestant Liberals are of the masses of the Church.

The Clerical Delusion

The Liberals with their dissident congregationalism and anti-clericalism are clearly Protestant in spirit, but the Conservatives are clearly Roman Catholic in spirit, ‘Philopapist’, as can be seen in their misogyny (2) and homosexuality. Their clericalisation of the Church, obvious from website pictures seemingly showing more clergy than people at some services, is typical of the Vatican. This goes back at least to the later Metropolitan Nikodim (Rotov), who died in the arms of the Pope in Rome in 1978. This Philopapism with its sexual perversions is a disease that has spread among some in the Russian episcopate, both inside and outside Russia. As lifelong admirers of the power and money of Papism, which is full of sexual perverts, such bishops want to live as State bureaucrats.

Western critics of the Russian Orthodox Church imagine that it is a kind of Erastian Church, like the Church of England, where all the bishops are nominated by a Prime Minister, who may be a Hindu, or a Jew, or more often an atheist. This is nonsense. The Russian Church is not a State Church. It is free. Sadly, the truth is even worse than Anglicanism, for the free have given up their freedom. The need to kowtow to the State does not come from the State, it comes from such bishops themselves. In this way the senior Russian episcopate is exactly like that of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. The faithful in both Churches, including in the New York Synod, which parrots the love of power and money of its masters in Moscow (Note 1 below), have been let down – all voluntarily (3).

Thus, we see why the great saints of the Russian Orthodox Church were persecuted and lived far from the centres – with the exception of fools for Christ. St Paisius was forced to flee to Moldavia. Others lived in Sarov, Optina, Glinsk etc. In the twentieth century Elder Nikolai (Guryanov) lived on a remote island on the Pskov Lake. As for St John of Shanghai, he lived far away from Russia, ‘in the provinces’. The problem is the great abyss fixed between most of the episcopate and monastic life, and yet the episcopate is supposed to be composed of monks. The lack of monasticism is why today the Russian Church has embraced both the Vatican and Russian nationalism and is no longer multinational, but mononational. And that is how it has lost the Ukrainians.

Conclusion

When did all this recent decadence of Conservatives and Liberals begin in the Russian Church, formerly the Church of the New Martyrs and New Confessors? Without doubt, it all began in the 1990s, when the Church became a business, selling tobacco and alcohol – make money from anything. Then in about 2010, having obtained money, they made the huge mistake of turning from money to politics for more power. The new money-changers in the Temple ignored the Gospel again: ‘Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s’. And so came chastisement, in the form of covid and then of the Ukraine.

One of our parishioners considers that any candidate for the episcopate should first have to spend two weeks with two small children. Alternatively, perhaps every bishop should be forced to spend two weeks every three months cleaning the toilets or working in the kitchen garden of a real, down-to-earth monastery. Or else bishops must delegate far more to senior priests in deaneries, who decide who will be ordained and will call in the by then defeudalised bishop (they are for now feudal lords) when needed. Or else have a married episcopate – though that radical change would need the decision of a Universal Council.

Notes:

1.

The Four-Stage Moscow Business Plan for the ‘Effective Manager’ – copied to the letter by Russian bishops outside Russia.

a) An older bishop chooses a candidate for the episcopate, sometimes this may be a boyfriend (there are many examples of this, whom we could name), but in any case a candidate who is usually just as narcissistic or as sociopathic as himself. Then the older bishop obtains approval for his consecration. (At this point money often changes hands; 35 years ago Constantinople was charging was $20,000 a time – who knows how much Moscow charges now).

b) The new bishop enters his diocese, acquires a nice property and a nice car, if possible a cook and a chauffeur, and then gets rid of all those who were there before him, sometimes by retiring them, however young they may be. It does not matter even if they have been faithful for fifty years or more, if their large families are examples of Orthodoxy, if they have been good pastors, if they are popular (all the more reason), if they have written books, given international conferences – they must be destroyed through fictitious ‘suspensions’ and ‘defrockings’ (defrockings for no canonical reason are spiritual murder), for they know more than the young upstart bishop and are more popular than him. The young careerist will brook no rivals. The Church must be destroyed by him, as by all those who in their delusion do not even know that they are working for satan, but imagine that they are supporting the Church.

c) A young new priest, who owes his ordination to the new bishop (often literally, he owes him money for his ordination), is sent to a place without a church and told to build one, or to a place with a ruined church and told to restore it. For this privilege he has to pay a heavy annual tax to his bishop. If he does not do this, he will be bullied, intimidated and publicly humiliated with anger and cruelty. This puts pressure on him to extort money from his parishioners, charging for sacraments and anything else, and also puts pressure on the family of the priest. We know cases where such financial pressure has led to divorce. It is not uncommon. This same technique, like the rest of the Business Plan, is commonly used in all parts of the Russian Church, both inside and outside Russia, including in the USA and Western Europe. We have seen it.

d) Even if the young priest manages to do this and establishes a parish composed of loyal and enthusiastic people, he is then thrown out of the new church and replaced with a favourite of the bishop who can pay more for that privilege. This ruins the parish, but who cares? Money rules and real estate counts.

All four stages are marked by a total lack of Christian Faith and Love, accompanied by vice, exploitation, betrayal, bullying and cloning – clones being priests similar to the bishop and to his greed. Sometimes this similarity is even physical – in style of dress, shape of beard etc.

  1. There is perhaps no sadder example of the hatred of women and even vulgarity than that of the now fallen Fr Andrei Tkachjov, who at the start was respected and used to say helpful things. Pray for him in his temptation.
  2. Thus, the Pope of Rome has now suggested a concelebration with the Greek Patriarch in Turkey in summer 2025 to mark the 1700th anniversary of the First Universal Council in 325. We would suggest that any meeting, let alone concelebration, should first be made conditional on the Pope restoring the Nicene Creed in Roman Catholicism and renouncing once and for all the filioque heresy. Then we shall know if the Greek Patriarch is Orthodox or not.

 

Peace for the Ukraine – and for the Orthodox Church?

US Disengagement?

Even before Trump had been elected, the US elite had realised that it had to disengage from its Ukraine project. Russia had not been weakened, regime-changed, dismembered and destroyed, as had been the US plan all along. Instead its economy was booming, becoming the fourth biggest in the world, President Putin was more popular than ever and BRICS had taken off. As for the illegal Western sanctions, they were ignored by 90% of the world and damaged only the West. The US puppet, Zelensky, in his bunker in Kiev is clearly delusional, taking, they say, cocaine and desperately threatening invasions of Russia, without troops, arms and munitions, and even nuclear war, without nuclear weapons.

The claim by President-elect Trump during his campaign that he would achieve peace in the Ukraine within 24 hours, even before he entered the Oval Office was all presupposition and hubris. How could he end a war which the US had already lost. and Russian victory is ending anyway? Peace does not depend on him, even if the tragedy began as a US proxy war. Peace depends on the actions of the Russian military and President Putin. Indeed, peace may come through Russian military victory and Ukrainian military collapse even before Trump assumes office. That would probably be very welcome to Trump, enabling him to begin as President unburdened of the curse of the Ukraine, which has ruined everything.

The fact is that the President-elect does not want to solve the conflict in the Ukraine, what he wants is to disengage from it, so that the US can save money and at last ‘pivot to Asia’. The Ukraine is now a distraction from US strategic interests. Trump wants to run away from Kiev, just as the US ran away from its failed wars in Saigon and Kabul. Trump can do this very easily, if Kiev collapses before Trump’s inauguration. He can simply blame Biden for everything. This will be his ’exit strategy’. The puppet-master has changed and so the puppets must change too. After all, Trump has from the outset stated that the war would never have begun, if he had been President at the time. And that may well be true.

Peace Talks?

But who can Russia talk too? The Russians cannot talk to the Ukrainians, as their President is illegitimate and talks with Russia were literally outlawed by Kiev in 2022. The Russians cannot talk to Europeans, as they have shown themselves to be delusional liars and treaty-breaking traitors ever since 2014. This can be seen from their refusal to implement the so-called Minsk Accords, which they openly confessed were simply delaying tactics. In any case, the narcissistic and so delusional European ruling class is discredited and hated by the peoples of Europe and represents only the past and its own selfish interests. That ruling class is unable to talk to Russia because it is incapable of dealing with reality – its defeat.

In any case, Russia will certainly not sit down and talk now, when it is on the brink of victory. Would the Allies have stopped in January 1945 to talk to Hitler? Russia will not stop now, victory is in sight. Anyway, as we said, Kiev has literally outlawed talks with Russia and its President is illegal, as his term of service ended earlier this year, like that of his Parliament. The war has continued for so long only because of Biden’s support and EU and UK backing. And bankrupt Europe cannot replace the US, as Europe has run out of money and arms and cannot let its own troops die there. And it is troops that the Ukraine needs, for it has lost nearly a million soldiers, 517,000 of them in the unfinished year of 2024 alone.

As a result, with no-one to talk to, the Russians are taking back more and more territory from the Ukraine, 100 years after it was illegally handed over to the Ukraine by the anti-Russian Bolsheviks. There will be no ‘frozen conflict’ or ‘stalemate’ here, just Russian victory. ‘Frozen conflict’ was possible two years ago. The only people the Russians could talk to now are the Americans – but under Trump. Trump is a businessman and wants to disengage from a loss-making business and must sack Zelensky. As the Americans no longer have any diplomats, the hope is that Trump will appoint the only European politician left – Victor Orban – to talk not only to the Russian President, but also to the Russian Patriarch.

The Russian President

The Russian President could express the following terms to Trump’s representative, perhaps Orban: Firstly, drop all 16,000 illegal anti-Russian sanctions and absurd criminal charges. Then, recognise as Russian the four Russian provinces which have already joined Russia, and, if they have been taken by Russia by then, the next four once Russian provinces of the south and east, including Nikolaev and Odessa on the Black Sea coast, and the three more once Russian provinces to the north-east (Chernigov, Sumy, Poltava). The Russian President would leave the rest to become again the real Ukraine, perhaps to be called ‘Kievan Rus’ (Kiyivska Rus’), more or less mirroring Belarus to the north.

Such a nationally homogenous, Ukrainian-speaking Kievan Rus would consist of 14 administrative areas, just over half of the original 27 (including the two that were in the Russian Crimea), its new easternmost provinces being Kiev, Cherkasy and Kirovohrad. This would represent an area of about 260,000 square kilometres and a pre-war population of about 16 million. This would draw Ukrainian refugees back from Europe. Kievan Rus would be a neutral, sovereign and independent nation, that is, demilitarised (free of NATO) and denazified (free of the EU) which are racist, anti-sovereignty organisations. Agreement could then be reached and Russia would by treaty guarantee the territorial integrity of all European nations.

Of course, they would have to make a condition that Moldova should carry out referenda for any groups among its border population, such as those in Transdniestria and Gagauzia, who may wish to join Russia. Similarly, referenda must be held for Romanian and Hungarian minorities on the borders of Kievan Rus who may wish to ‘go home’. If the three tiny Baltic statelets were at last obliged to grant human rights to their Russian minorities, there would be no threat from Russia to them. With such an agreement, the Western half of Europe would be secure and could slash its military spending. Then Trump would see his dream come true and abandon NATO, which could be dissolved, just like the EU.

The Russian Patriarch

The Russian Orthodox Patriarch also has to be involved in these talks. Leader of by far the largest Local Orthodox Church, the whole Orthodox Church of 200 million has been in chaos ever since the British-orchestrated palace revolt or ‘Russian Revolution’ of February 1917. Without the Russian Church, several key Local Orthodox Churches were taken over through political interference by Great Britain and, after the Second World War, specifically in 1948 with the forced removal by the CIA of Patriarch Maximos V of Constantinople, by the USA. Freedom for the Orthodox Church, the end of Western interference in its internal affairs, is essential for peace in the Ukraine and for justice in Church affairs.

There would have to be an agreement with the Russian Church, which has also suffered as a result of American policy in the Ukraine and elsewhere. This is principally because of the Zionist neocon ideology, implemented by Nuland, Pompeo, Blinken, Biden etc. This established a fake Church in the Ukraine, permitted the open persecution of the real Church there and also sanctioned the Russian Patriarch personally. What could the terms of the Patriarch be and what concessions could he grant in return? Here there has to be mutuality, as there have been excesses on both sides. Here are Russian Orthodox terms to be imposed on the Greek Churches by the USA, with compensation from the USA:

  1. Closure of the fake Church in the Ukraine, the OCU, with Constantinople withdrawing its absurd Tomos, which justified it. All stolen property is to be returned to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (see Concessions 1, 2 and 3 below).
  2. Release of all Orthodox in Finland, Estonia and Lithuania from the uncanonical jurisdiction of Constantinople, introduced from the 1920s on, on condition that all Orthodox there be granted a new Autocephalous Baltic Orthodox Church (see Concession 5 below).
  3. No more interference by Constantinople in the affairs of the Polish Orthodox Church and, especially, in those of the Church of the Czechia and Slovakia.
  4. Granting to the Russian Church of jurisdiction over all Africa, except for Egypt, which has its own historic Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, based in Alexandria (thus returning to the pre-1920s situation). This is on condition that Moscow establishes an Autocephalous African Orthodox Church there by 2050.

Russian Concessions:

  1. Immediate resumption by Moscow of communion and concelebration with the Churches of Constantinople, Alexandria and other Greek Orthodox Churches.
  2. Immediate rescinding of all ‘suspensions’ and ‘defrockings’ of clergy in Russia, the Ukraine, Moldova, Lithuania, Western Europe and elsewhere, which were carried out for political reasons because of clergy disagreements with political, nationalist or uncanonical sectarian ideologies, imposed by certain Russian bishops.
  3. Autocephaly for the Kievan Rus Orthodox Church within twelve months.
  4. Autocephaly for the Moldovan Orthodox Church on the remaining national territory of Moldova within twelve months, in concert with the Romanian Orthodox Church, in order to reunite all Moldovan Orthodox in one Church. The Moldovan Diaspora in Western countries would come under the care of the Romanian Orthodox Church.
  5. Autocephaly for all Orthodox (about 500,000 in number) in the three Baltic States and Finland, forming an autocephalous Baltic Orthodox Church within twelve months.
  6. All Russian Orthodox in the Diasporas in Western Europe, the Americas and Oceania are to be instructed, under threat of excommunication, to merge by negotiation into new Local Churches, to be founded on those territories by 2050. This would be conditional on all other Local Churches which have Diaspora jurisdictions issuing the same instructions to their Diasporas.

 

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 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!