Category Archives: The Ukraine

Holy Rus in High Suffolk: An Interview with a Russian Count

Over the last fourteen years I have got to know particularly well a couple who are spiritual children and whom I call the Earl and Countess of Orthodox East Anglia. Nobles of Russian extraction, they have made their home in England and chosen to live in the mystical heart of our local East Anglian Orthodox Church and Kingdom. Count (Earl in the English system) Benckendorff, a parishioner since 2010, agreed to this extensive conversation after I interviewed his wife over a month ago. With his permission we have slightly edited his words, though his English is excellent.

On the table in the oak-beamed living room, where we conduct the interview, stands a golden samovar, bought in St Audrey’s Ely, alongside a portrait of the Tsar’s Family. Nearby stands a lovely vase with a bouquet of fragrant roses, which the Countess has picked from the garden of their thatched farmhouse in High Suffolk, near the Norfolk border. The Countess has served us tea from her favourite Royal Albert service, the doors to the garden wide open before us. Such is the setting for this second conversation, the recording of which stretched on into the lengthening shadows of the English summer evening.

 

Q: Can you please tell us something about your family?

A: In 1775 the Benckendorff family was awarded an estate of 8,000 acres in Sosnovka in the Tambov province of Russia for services to the Crown. After the Revolution most branches of the family, like ours, remained inside the USSR, but we had to change our name for fear of being murdered by the Bolsheviks. Indeed, one priestly ancestor is a New Martyr. At first, we remained in Russia, but after 1945 we moved to what had by then become the eastern Ukraine, though that region is now back in Russia again after 100 years of Soviet-imposed exile.

After 1917 one branch settled in England. This was the family of Count Alexander Benckendorff, who was the last ambassador of the Tsar to Great Britain between 1903 and 1917. His family found itself stranded in the White Russian emigration, as Alexander had passed away in January 1917. Unlike his brother Paul, who was very close to Tsar Nicholas in Tsarskoe Selo, Alexander was never Orthodox. He had become a Catholic by conviction from Lutheranism and is buried in the crypt of Westminster Cathedral in London.

Q: Where did you meet the Countess?

A: In the Ukraine. There I, a Benckendorff, met and married another Benckendorff, though the Countess was previously quite unknown to me and her branch of the family had also assumed another name. Some time ago I worked out that we are eighth cousins. The way we met was quite extraordinary, neither knowing that the other was of Benckendorff descent and yet feeling that we were kindred souls. Both of us were divorced, having made bad marriages when we were far too young, like so many who were brought up in the Soviet Union. The marriages did not last very long and there were no children. Some years after we met, in 2008, we left Russia and settled in the West.

Q: Did you know about the English Benckendorffs then?

A: No, we did not know anything about the ‘English’ branch of the family until five years ago. To our surprise, we discovered that they had lived in south-east Suffolk, very close to where we first lived before we moved here. Their choice was because of the agricultural connections of the Benckendorff family. Ransomes farm machinery, made in Ipswich, was used on our estate and there were also contacts with the Suffolk Fisons fertiliser company, which later came to own a very large property called Harvest House in Felixstowe.

And so the family story turned full circle. In any case, Suffolk is where we have made our home and we in no way regret it. This is the land of St Edmund, the patron saint of Suffolk and of England, and we fly his flag here. You introduced us to him and to the other local saints. We respect the Local Church and honour the local saints. That is our Orthodox duty. We had thought of calling our Suffolk home ‘Sosnovka’ from the name of our estate, but we agreed that we must be local and so we named it ‘St Edmund’s House’.

Q: What did you study as a young man?

A: In the 90s I studied history at the University of Kiev and then some years later theology at St Tikhon’s University of the Humanities in Moscow. However, I never taught history, because in the 1990s we had to practise commerce in order to survive. We were fortunate in business because of my knowledge of English and French and my wife’s knowledge of German. We did very well. That is how I came to study as a mature student at St Tikhon’s in Moscow and then we moved to the West in 2008 and England in 2010. Nearly six years ago we bought this old farmhouse. Now I still study theology and the history of the Russian Church and I have also written a novel in Russian under a pseudonym. We also breed roses which involves travel to many places, including to Germany. Financially we have been helped by the investments we made in the past.

Q: As you know, I come from the Suffolk-Essex border where the dry and sunny climate and the soil are ideal for seed growing, which was my father’s profession. He was a sweet pea expert and even has a sweet pea named after him. How did you come to breed roses and not, for example, sweet peas?

A: Like you, Fr Andrew, we love sweet peas, also lilac and many other flowers and shrubs, but both of us have always loved roses more, already in the Ukraine, where in the east the black earth is so fertile and the climate is so good. Some twenty years ago my wife fell in love with roses in a monastery there, where she had the obedience from her spiritual father of maintaining the monastery rose garden. A huge variety of roses is available in Russia and the Ukraine with sturdier stems than in England, even though you have David Austen roses. One of our favourite roses is ‘Zephyr’ from Turchinov. We also love lilacs and again there is a Russian lilac called ‘Beauty of Moscow’. We are introducing Russian roses, lilacs and others into England. This seems to be our mission!

Strangely enough, we discovered that my great-great-grandfather’s cousin, the ambassador Alexander Konstantinovich, and his wife, Sofia Petrovna, who was a Tolstoy, also grew roses. Then their grand-daughter, Natalia Konstantinovna, who passed away only in 2018, grew them. Her husband, Thomas Humphrey Brooke, who was a friend of Sir Alfred Munnings, became an internationally acknowledged expert on roses. He was a close friend of the rosarian Peter Beales at his gardens in Attleborough in Norfolk. Humphrey cultivated over 500 varieties of rose. I know Peter Beales’ son, who has just retired. Roses must be in the Benckendorff genes.

Q: Let us turn to Church matters now. As you follow Church affairs very closely, you know much about the schism between Moscow and Constantinople on account of the Ukraine. Do you see a way out of this?

A: There is always a way out. It is called repentance, the antidote to despair, the antidote that Judas did not take. Beware, he did not take the antidote and hanged himself. What must be done to undo this schism is to work in reverse. This means going back to what caused the schism and reversing it. This means that Constantinople must abandon its pretensions to the territory of the Russian Church in the ex-Soviet Union. These pretensions were formed because the Patriarchate of Moscow refused to grant anyone outside the Russian Federation autocephaly and because Washington paid Constantinople to commit the crime of setting up a fake Church in the Ukraine. Still, if Moscow had given the Ukrainian Orthodox Church autocephaly years ago, creating a national Church there, Constantinople would never have meddled, because the Ukrainians would have been satisfied already.

Next, or preferably before that, Moscow must immediately stop its schism with Constantinople, start concelebrating and abandon its excommunications and defrockings, freeing people to act according to their conscience. The schism was quite unnecessary and just brought Moscow into exactly the same isolation and disrepute as Constantinople, losing it all sympathy. Two wrongs do not make a right. How do you say that in English, when both are equally guilty? There is an expression with six and six in it.

Q: Six of one and half a dozen of the other?

A: Yes, that’s it. Anyway, Moscow must also negotiate a canonical solution to the African problem. Either Africa belongs canonically to the Patriarchate of Alexandria or to Moscow, or else the territory must be divided and different geographical regions will belong to one or the other. For example, Egypt, or even all Muslim North Africa, could remain under Alexandria and Moscow could take Black Africa, where it has a lot of political support, though only if it is prepared to set up a real, local, independent African Orthodox Church. You cannot have overlapping jurisdictions on the same territory. We must support the canonical order of the Church internationally.

Q: Is this realistic? Look at the Diasporas, where we have had overlapping jurisdictions for over a century.

A: Things are changing. Look, the Special Military Operation in the Ukraine will be over soon. The Kiev regime is collapsing. Some even say it will all be over for the Dormition, on 28th August. Perhaps not so soon. In any case, the USA is giving up on its Fascist friends in the Ukraine, who have failed. Americans hate failure. What is the way out? One way is if Trump, who is already the real President – some even say that Biden is literally, not just metaphorically, dead – could perhaps denounce the whole Ukraine project. He could say that it was all a fantasy of Biden, ‘Genocide Joe’, as they call him.

Trump must abandon the fake OCU Church that Constantinople set up in the Ukraine with US dollars, denouncing it as created by those who deceived him in Washington in 2018. President Putin will make the freedom of the Church a condition for peace anyway. The Church must be free from the persecution of the OCU, which must return the thousands of churches it has stolen. Trump must give up the illegal sanctions against Russia, release frozen Russian assets and return the stolen interest on those assets.

In this way President Trump can get a photo opportunity of the Two Presidents. He will be shaking hands with President Putin in Moscow (Trump loves having his photo taken) as the great hero, peacemaker and dealmaker, unlike Biden the warmaker and failure. Why, Trump could get a Nobel Prize – those prizes are funded by the CIA anyway, as we saw with Solzhenitsyn. Trump and Moscow can sign an agreement, stating that Washington has no claims to the Ukraine and that Moscow has no claims to the Baltics, Finland, Poland, Romania, or anywhere else west of the Ukraine. This will be historic, but should all have been done 33 years ago in 1991.

Q: What about Moldova?

A: This agreement would include Moldova, unless some minorities who live there along the border with the New Ukraine or Russia vote by democratic referendum to transfer, for example, the Transdnistrians and the Gagauzians. Most of Moldova will eventually go back to Romania. It is historically inevitable. The Patriarchate in Moscow has lost the loyalty of most Moldovans through its centralising racism and many there are already joining the Romanian Church.

Such a deal of the Two Presidents would give both Russia and Western Europe security, making NATO entirely redundant, which is what both President Trump and President Putin want. Such a new security agreement for Europe could be presented as a triumph for Trump (the Americans are experts at PR) and Moscow will be fully satisfied. Russia will set up the third Union State in the New Ukraine, which will be a second Belarus, perhaps also landlocked, as all the south and east of the old Ukraine, which are Russian, as I know, may well rejoin Russia. The Ukraine will be demilitarised and denazified, as Moscow needs. With such a deal both sides will save money and, above all, both will save lives.

Q: Do you think the New Ukraine will retain the western borders of Stalin’s Ukraine?

A: Moscow may well give some extreme western parts of Stalin’s Ukraine, for Stalin’s borders are what Biden and the EU Commissars have been fighting for, back to Poland, Romania and especially to Hungary, our ally. This would be seen as a great victory for the USA and as a great victory for Russia, though it would not be a victory for the Western European elite. But that elite does not count for anything internationally and can be ignored. Moscow negotiates only with Trump, neither with the sick old man before Trump, nor with the Western European puppies who lie and cheat.

With peace in the Ukraine, the Patriarchate in Moscow will also have to negotiate a new relationship with the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Kiev, under which I began my Orthodox life. And probably also a new relationship with other parts of the Russian Church outside the Russian Federation. Otherwise, Moscow will lose everything there too. A wave of autocephalies must follow. The age of Soviet central planning is over. It was over with the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, only the Church authorities did not keep up with changing times.

Q: Why do you say that this will not be a victory for the Western European elite?

A: The Western European political elite, its ruling class, has for eighty years been living off the USA, licking its heels and barking when told to. It has become dependent on the USA, not only a drug-addict enslaved to the USA, but also a vampire that sucks its blood. As in Dostoyevsky’s parable of the Grand Inquisitor, that elite does not want freedom. But Western Europe is a very expensive slave to keep and the now bankrupt USA can no longer afford it, just as one day it will no longer be able to afford to keep its other vassals, Israel, Japan and South Korea.

The American Empire is like the Roman Empire which in the early fifth century could not afford to keep Britain and had to abandon it. Western Europe will have to find its own way, control its own destiny, defend itself. Actually, it will be able to slash its futile military spending once the new security agreement or non-aggression pact with Russia has been signed. That is also what Russia wants. It is tired of being invaded by the West.

Today the USA is letting go of Western Europe. This means the UK and the EU, minus Hungary, Slovakia, others like Serbia and maybe later many more like Romania, Greece, and perhaps even Italy. The first three have already more or less negotiated their way out of the EU into BRICS. Freedom from the USA will undermine the parasitic globalist Western European elite of puppies and puppets, banksters and gangsters, unprincipled and hypocritical pawns all of them. They backed the Kiev Nazis even to their own detriment, allowing prices for their peoples to double and letting the Americans blow up the Nordstream pipeline.

That ruling class of perverts will have to resign, if they are not first voted out, or better arrested, because they no longer have the protection of Trump’s Washington. The Western European swamp will be drained. That is why they and their globalist media propagandists like the BBC feel betrayed and hate Trump. As a result of all this, we shall at last see new Western European rulers, hopefully far more respectful of the wishes of the native peoples of Western Europe. Then can be abandoned those satanic and blasphemous pagan festivals like Eurovision and the 33rd Olympic Games Opening Ceremony, which openly mocked Christ, Who was crucified when He was 33. No wonder French cathedrals burn down. If that is Western Civilisation, then there is nothing left to defend.

All these countries can then be at peace with the eastern half of Europe, comprised of Russia, the New Ukraine and Belarus. Importantly, this eastern half stretches on into North Asia, to the Chinese border and the Pacific Ocean. Russia is the gateway to Asia, the future, where three of the world’s four largest economies thrive. We are at last seeing the Gaullist vision of a natural unity which stretches from Lisbon to Vladivostok. Western Europe will no longer be unnaturally cut off, but will rejoin the whole of Asia, of which it is only a north-western peninsula.

All this is possible, though if and when it happens is another story. It may all take many years and I trust more in Vance than in Trump. These are just my thoughts and hopes. We shall see.

Q: Will England take part in this New Western Europe, which will at last become a real part of Eurasia, which geographically it always has been?

A: Ah, dear old England. A good question. I really hope so. If the USA rejects England, it will have to leave the USA. It will not be the fifty-first State of the USA. And with the very fragile, violent and divisive situation in the present fifty States with their 35 trillion dollars of debt, that is not an enviable position to be in. I think England should ally itself with the new, post-American, Eurasian Europe of the BRICS Alliance. Ireland, Scotland and Wales surely will. May St Edmund and the English saints guide England towards this.

But for England to become sovereign again, the oppressive British Establishment ruling class will first have to be removed, with its private elite schools, Oxbridge, Westminster, BBC, Financial Times, Economist, tabloid press like the Guardian, the Telegraph, all those other Daily State propaganda mouthpieces, and the Blairs, Camerons, Sunaks and Starmers. As you have very often written, Father, that elite is alien, not Norman by blood, but Norman by mentality, spiritually Norman, made up of spiritual invaders.

Q: We have got into political affairs. To come back to our question, what in your view was the essential error behind the Greek-Russian schism?

A: Lack of communion. It is vital to remain in communion with everyone. It is a great, great sin to break communion, because if you do this, you cause division in the Church. And the Moscow bureaucrats who surround the Patriarch committed this sin, weaponising communion. And look where they are now: isolated, feared, unloved and scandal-ridden. It is all so Soviet. They have lost all their best friends – they even lost you, Father, who spent all your life fighting for communion and the reintegration of the Russian Church.

Q: Why do bishops break communion?

A: It is always because they want more power. And what do they do once they have power? They introduce novelties in order to justify themselves. This was exactly the case of Rome in the eleventh century. All the innovations they introduced after they had broken off communion from the Church were self-justification for breaking communion. And self-justification is the opposite of repentance.

A thousand years on and the Popes of Rome and the Vatican machine have still not repented, still claiming to be rulers of the Christian world, and so they are still out of communion with us, who follow the principle of the Local, which is the principle of Catholicity. They instead imposed the Centre, that is, Rome. Can you imagine, they tried to impose their barbarous Latin on the descendants of the Civilisations of the Incas, Maya and Aztecs! No respect for the Local!

We must be very strict about keeping in communion. The way back, the return, is in respecting the canonical territories of each Local Church. That is what Rome did not do and instead tried to impose itself by the sword on Orthodox territories, with their crusades, inquisitions and so on. Now Constantinople is trying to do the same, imposing centralisation in imitation of Papism. And Moscow Church bureaucrats tried to do the same, but God has intervened, its Soviet Empire over Non-Russians is crumbling.

Q: I would like to come back to my original question, which we did not answer. Do these considerations give us a solution to the divisions in the Diasporas, where there have been several overlapping jurisdictions for over a century?

A: In the Diasporas, where there are mixed Orthodox populations, responsibility for organising new Local Churches lies with the majority ethnic group, but that majority must respect all the customs of the minorities. This is what Bishop Tikhon, the future Russian Patriarch and Saint, did when he headed the multinational Northern American Orthodox Church before the Revolution. Then Carpatho-Russians and Russian-converted Alaskans were the majority, but minorities like the Syrians, Serbs and others were together with them.

Today the Greeks are the Orthodox majority there, as also in Australia, but unity is blocked because of the political and imperialist style of the Greeks. As long as they have that Hellenist style, unity will be impossible. Only when the Greeks have a Non-Greek Patriarch, will they be taken seriously. As regards Western Europe the Romanians are the majority. Here I am hopeful, because respect is what our Romanian Metropolitan Joseph gave our Russian and Moldovan parishes with our calendar, languages and customs, when we had to flee to his canonical protection from pseudo-Russian episcopal persecution. And we in turn greatly respect and love the Romanians. I love their singing and their simplicity! Mutual respect is vital.

Q: One well-known Russian Metropolitan said that the Moscow-Constantinople schism is as big and as permanent as the 1054 Western Schism. What do you think?

A: That was nonsense. This schism is all about personalities and they are temporary. Here today, gone tomorrow, as you say in English. Neither Moscow, nor Constantinople has renounced or changed the Creed, unlike Rome in 1054. So this schism is not at all on the same level as 1054, it is not a dogmatic issue, but a vulgar issue of territory and personalities. And personalities change and are replaced. In any case, the Metropolitan-oligarch who said that, the bureaucrat was in part responsible for the whole fiasco, is now suspended and completely discredited. Nobody is listening to him any more. Here today, gone tomorrow.

Q: Can other Local Churches play a role in healing the Moscow-Constantinople schism?

A: Of course, and a vital role. The Churches of Jerusalem, Bulgaria, Albania, Serbia, Romania, Georgia, Macedonia, Poland and perhaps others like Antioch, Czechoslovakia and America, and of course the canonical Church of Metropolitan Onufry in the Ukraine, will play a vital role. Even some bishops in Greece and Cyprus are sufficiently non-racist to understand the reality. Some Local Churches are already playing that role, stressing the Conciliar principle, the principle of Sobornost, that is, Catholicity, which, by the way, is the exact opposite of Catholicism and it is precisely the spirit of Catholicism, that is Papism, which caused the schism. Read the interview with the new Bulgarian Patriarch, who was elected after the American candidate lost and was humiliated and the Greeks had to go home like whipped dogs. His words are inspired.

Q: Do you know Metropolitan Onufry?

A: Not personally, only by sight, but I do know Metropolitan Agafangel of Odessa and Archbishop Diodor quite well and they have the same spirit. The further you are from Moscow, the more you find that spirit.

Q: You mention that the essence of the schism is the lust for power on the part of bishops and the spirit of Catholicism or Papism which lies behind it. Can you expand on this?

A: We are all waiting for the restoration of canonical order in the Russian Church, but this cannot happen until the end of what some Russians call ‘Philocatholicism’. This means the fawning admiration by some Russian bishops of the Vatican power-structure, which is the concept of a Church-State, a Church which is a State, or is even more powerful than a State, as history saw at Canossa. However, I am completely against this word because I respect ordinary Catholics, who are Catholics only because they were born in a certain country and I would never insult or disrespect them. The disease inside the Russian Church is not Philocatholicism, the disease is ‘Philopapism’. That is the real heart of the issue, And, by the way, it has nothing to do with ecumenism. Some of the worst Philopapists are anti-ecumenist.

Q: In that case, can you define ‘Philopapism’ for us?

A: Yes, but first understand that Philopapism is not just a Russian disease, it has long infected Constantinople, where it is called ‘Eastern Papism’, and before that it infected Rome, where it has always been called Papism. In Rome the problem was and is Western nationalism, in Constantinople it is Greek nationalism and in Moscow it is Russian nationalism. In Russia, it is not at all a recent Soviet disease, ‘Sergianism’, unlike as some very politicised, anti-Communist emigres used to imagine, it goes back centuries in Russia too, long before Communism.

It existed, for example, just before the Revolution in the awful persecution of the so-called ‘Name of God’ monks on Mt Athos. It was Tsar Nicholas who stopped that persecution, which had been instigated by Metr Antony (Khrapovitsky), who later became the first leader of the émigré ROCOR. The persecution was carried out by bureaucrats who were more or less atheists. The First World War followed it. And most of those very same bishops who had persecuted simple piety, then abandoned Tsar Nicholas at the Revolution and even rejoiced at his overthrow. Later they had to repent, redeeming themselves at the price of martyrdom or of exile. They had to pay the price for their earlier vile persecution.

Q: What about the Soviet form of Philopapism?

A: The post-Revolutionary bout of Philopapism goes back to Metropolitan, later Patriarch, Sergius, who wanted to ‘save the Church’, just like the Popes and the recent Patriarchs of Constantinople. How can you ‘save the Church’? Christ is the Saviour! The Church does not need saving, it is we, including bishops and patriarchs, who need saving. Who do they think they are? The problem is that the Philopapists see the Church as a purely worldly organisation, just like the Popes of Rome, who used to lead armies in order to defend their Church. In order to defeat the barbarians, they themselves became barbarians! Who then was the gentleman?! From Patriarch Sergius this infection spread down to personalities like Metropolitan Nikodim (Rotov), who characteristically died in the arms of the Pope. Some say that he was a secret cardinal. Maybe. That is not the point. From him the disease has contaminated further to this day.

This disease is the mentality that bishops are ‘princes of the Church’, in fact they are perverted oligarchs, just like the Borgias in Renaissance Rome. This is poisonous. It is why I refused to go to many churches when I lived in the Ukraine and Russia. They were an immoral business operation and many bishops there are immoral, chosen only because they know how to make money, not because they believe in God, pray, or are monks. I think many of these new Russian Borgias should go to prison. The current Metropolitan Hilarion affair is only the tip of the iceberg. Others must be trembling now too. The truth is coming out and judgement is coming to them all.

Q: You said that Philopapism goes back centuries in Russia. When did Philopapism begin?

A: It came in after the fall of Constantinople, the Second Rome, in 1453. So began the idea of the Third Rome. Fighting against St Nil of Sora and the hesychast Non-Possessors – St Sergius of Radonezh had been one of them earlier on – the situation came to a head at the so-called ‘Raskol’, that is, the Old Ritualist schism 200 years later. Then the administrative centre of the Russian Church in Moscow was contaminated by Philopapism, which was also encouraged by the idea of the Third Rome, which maintains that Russia has a messianic mission. Russia does have a mission, but it takes place within the multilateral Alliance of Civilisations, which is what BRICS is about.

In other words, Philopapists think that Russia is exceptional, indispensable to the world and therefore anything its rulers do is justified. The antidote to this was in the concept of Moscow as a Second Jerusalem, but that option was cruelly rejected by the Moscow bureaucrats. It is not that I am in favour of Old Ritualism, which was a form of ignorant nationalism, but I am against persecution. What difference is there between the State persecution of the Old Ritualists in the seventeenth century and the State persecution of Orthodox in the twentieth century?

The Philopapist mentality creates pharisees and ‘high priests’, as Christ called them in the Gospel, those who like ‘the first places at table’. Philopapists consider that they are the chosen people and so above the law, above the canons, ‘exceptional’. But this mentality is why the pharisees crucified Christ, Who called them to order, what we call canonical order, and told them that our Kingdom is not of this world. He overturned the tables of these new moneychangers, which is what you did, Fr Andrew, when you chased out the new pharisees who were threatening you and screaming at you in 2021 and 2022. All those who persecuted you are one by one being removed. Bishops are not above the canons.

It is the Holy Spirit Who chooses us for mission, not pharisees. Pharisees think only in worldly terms of money and power, and camouflage themselves with messianism as self-justification for their lusts. It is simply lust for money and power that contaminates these people. Once they have money, they want power. It is always the same old sordid story of corruption and perversion. That is Philopapism.

Q: But Phariseeism itself is universal, isn’t it?

A: Yes, of course. It was this same missionary, messianic mentality which inspired the atheist Jew Bronstein-Trotsky, who wanted to spread the Communism of the Third International (which replaced the Third Rome) worldwide. He also persecuted, leading the Red Army and causing the deaths of millions. But it is not only Jewish, it can be Frankish, Norman, Venetian, Greek, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, French, British, German, Soviet, American, or anything else.

For instance, Soviet messianism strangely resembles American messianism. This is because the struggle between Washington and Moscow is in fact the struggle between the First Rome and the Third Rome, for the USA is the heir to the infallible Popes of the First Rome. ‘We are the exceptional people, the indispensable nation’, the infallible US have been saying of themselves ever since the collapse of the SU (Soviet Union), though its collapse had nothing to do with the Americans. (See how even the initials US and SU and their symbols, the white star and the red star, are the same, just the other way round).

Communism collapsed because it is unrealisable and went bankrupt. However, the collapse of the Soviet Union went to the heads of the US elite. They claimed absurdly: ‘This is the end of history and we have won. As the victors, we can set up a World Empire, called Globalism, we have exceptional authority, therefore no laws apply to us, we can carry out genocide in Iraq and Afghanistan, in Libya and Syria, in the Donbass and Gaza, we can ignore the International Criminal Court. We can do whatever we want’. In reality, this is just the same vulgar old imperialism, absolutism, immorality, cloaked in their smug Protestant self-righteousness and infallibility. It is Philopapism.

In reality only God is exceptional. No human being or country is exceptional.

Q: What do you think of what some call the ‘liberal opposition’ in the Russian Church, clergymen like Protodeacon Andrey Kuraev and the popular pastor Fr Alexei Usminsky? They are also opposed to these Vatican-adoring, ‘money and power’ Russian bishops, the pharisaic Philopapists, as you are.

A: The dissident liberals are opposed to the Philopapists, but not for the same reasons as I am. The liberals are opposed to such bishops because the liberals are in reality rationalistic and modernistic Protestants. Like all Protestants, they are naturally anti-Catholic, anti-Papist. However, like all Protestants they are also generally pro-Western and some are traitors to Russia, just like their corrupt enemies whom they fight and are also traitors to Russia (I make exceptions for some who are just extremely naïve and not very intelligent). We disagree with the liberals because we are not Protestants and we follow the historic Orthodox Faith.

We are not traitors, we are patriots of Russia, that is, of the real Russia, of Orthodox Rus. President Putin is preparing the way for that, for the coming Emperor. He took on not just Paris and Berlin, but the whole West and won. We hope that God gives him time to help cleanse the Church next.

However, I do disagree with the appalling way that the liberals have been treated, with their so-called ‘defrockings’ by the selfsame corrupt bishops. You cannot defrock a clergyman because he has different political views from his bishop under the absurd pretext that he is being ‘disobedient’. The threat of defrocking forced them and many others, in the Netherlands, Lithuania, Spain, USA and in Russia into joining Constantinople – they had no alternative. This is yet another example of the Moscow bureaucracy weaponising a sacrament, this time not the eucharist, but the priesthood. But grace is given by the Holy Spirit, not by pieces of paper signed by jealous or wicked bishops. Thank God, Patriarch Kyrill is beginning to remove them, suspend them or retire them. He has  a lot of work to do.

Q: How is authentic Orthodox missionary work different from American missionary work?

A: If you have a missionary message to spread to others, the message of Christ, then you do not spread it by violence and threats. This is what the ‘Roman Union’ of the Vatican did. This is what the ‘Soviet Union’ did. Now this is what the ‘American Union’ (which is USA and NATO – basically the ‘European Union’) does. They have all used violence and threats. This has guaranteed the downfall of all of them. It is what is happening now.

The American Union, usually called ‘The West’, is collapsing, it too has gone bankrupt. They have done it to themselves, just like the Soviet Union. As someone from the Soviet Union, I can see very clearly how the European Union has become the same. The commissars, mentality and lies of its politicians and journalists are exactly the same. But the Godless are always defeated because they are all from Babylon. Their Tower always collapses.

Authentic Orthodox missionary work does not use violence and threats. I have recently discovered the Russian saint, German of Alaska as an example. What a great monk! And how he has been ignored by Church authorities and was resisted by Russian State authorities (long before ‘Sergianism’!). He is unknown in Russia. St German lived among the Inuit people ‘as one of them’. Not even a priest, he did not impose his language or customs by violence or threats against the people. He did not try and steal their property. He was their servant and defender, not their persecutor or a ‘prince of the Church’. He was the real Apostle of Alaska. He was able to convert people, because he was Christlike.

In this he was just like Sts Cyril and Methodius, Apostles of the Slavs, St Stephen of Perm, Apostle of the Zyrians, St Nicholas, Apostle of Japan, or St Macarius, Apostle of the Altai, he respected others. That is the problem of the Moscow Patriarchal bureaucrats today, lack of respect for others, for the Local. And that is why they are losing everything, they put politics above the Church. If I may paraphrase St Matthew’s Gospel: Seek ye first the kingdom of man, and all these things will be taken from you’. They do not deserve to keep it. God will take it away from them because they are unworthy, just as He took Constantinople away from the Greeks in 1453 because of their racism. St German of Alaska’s way is the only way that Russia could convert the world and in no other way. Any other way is Philopapist.

Q: Whenever we talk, I feel nostalgic, as though I am talking to one of the old Russian emigres I knew in the 1970s, like my godfather, Nikolai Zernov. I would sit in his apartment in Northmoor Road in Oxford and look at the huge picture, almost fresco, he had of the Kremlin ‘before the deluge’, as he called it. Then there were Princess Kutaissova, Elizabeth Lopukhina, Dimitri Obolensky, Nadezhda Gorodetskaja or Lydia Slater, Boris Pasternak’s sister. They all had the same mentality. Why is this?

A: This is because we are Russian emigres like them! But I take your remark as a compliment. All I can say is that though we lived in the Soviet Union, we always kept our family traditions from before. Above all, we never, never accepted any Sovietisation of the Russian Orthodox Church, which has increased this Philopapist corruption and perversion today. This has made it and those who are too closely allied with it, like those crazy ROCOR Protestant converts in New York, into pariahs. It is so sad and so unnecessary. They have painted themselves into the corner with their notorious scandals, as you say. Now they are complaining because the rest of the Church at best ignores them and at worst openly mocks them. But how else are you going to treat psychopaths?

Q: Do you have any words of hope for our readers?

A: Yes, there is one thing. You know, I never used to like Trump. I thought he was a clown as well as a criminal and a narcissist. He was also a Russophobe and armed the Neo-Nazis against us and sanctioned us. But recently, he said something very Orthodox, no doubt for the first time in his life and without knowing it. He said: ‘Fight, fight, fight’! I even wanted to buy a picture of this moment, but my wife stopped me. She has no interest in politics and says it is all a waste of time. She prefers gardening and our two cats to politics. She says cats are far more intelligent than politicians.

She may be right, she so often is. But I still maintain that the concept of ‘Never surrender’ is Orthodox, because Christ never surrendered. If He had surrendered, there would never have been the Resurrection. So I say that Trump was saved for a purpose by the grace of God, the bullet missed him, but hit Biden instead and stopped World War III, and we should all repeat: ‘Fight, fight, fight’! Another American said something like: ‘Only those who are crazy enough to think they can change the world do change the world’. This is in fact the definition of our fools for Christ. They change the world, corrupt and perverted bishops do not. Why, they cannot even change themselves.

July 2024

 

 

Senator J D Vance: A Question to the Russian Orthodox Church

A member of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), between 1974 and 1977 I studied in Oxford under the ever-memorable Metr Kallistos (Ware), then taught in Greece and went on to study at the St Sergius Institute of Theology in Paris. In January 1981 I was tonsured reader by the Most Reverend Metropolitan Antony of Sourozh (ROC) at the Dormition Cathedral in London. In December 1991, after a decade in which I discovered bishops with mistresses and bishop-freemasons, I was ordained priest by a bishop of integrity. This was the ever-memorable Archbishop Antony of Geneva of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR), the successor of St John of Shanghai and Western Europe. This ordination followed seven years of service as a deacon in the Russian Orthodox Church. I served faithfully and without recompense as a priest for thirty years, in France, in Portugal, setting up the first ever Russian parish there, and in England.

In May 2012 I was awarded my first jewelled cross in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow by His Holiness Patriarch Kyrill. This was for my efforts in helping to bring the very small, New York-based Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) back into communion with the ROC Mother Church and fighting against the American sectarianism which had infected it in the USA. I believe that this was very much in accord with what would have been the wishes of St John and Archbishop Antony. In July 2018 I had the privilege of being in Ekaterinburg on the night of the 100th anniversary of the martyrdom of Tsar Nicholas II, his August Family and faithful servants, together with the Russian Patriarch and a host of other clergy. Then at midnight I walked the 13 miles together with 120,000 other Russian Orthodox faithful to Ganina Yama, the place where the atheists had first tried to bury the Imperial Martyrs and their servants.

On 10 April 2021, a new and highly controversial ROCOR bishop in London, a young American neophyte who had not long been a clergyman of ROCOR, was not educated in a seminary and was pastorally very inexperienced, publicly declared his intention to break communion with other Orthodox Churches. This included with the Western European Archdiocese of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) – the ROC is over 130 times larger than ROCOR. His unilateral decision came because he no longer accepted the age-old practice of the ROC of not receiving Catholic priests and people into the Church by rebaptism, but by confession and communion. He also told his laypeople that they could no longer take communion in that part of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), where we have had close family members and friends since the 1970s, because they had followed the traditional ROC practice. Thus, ROCOR created a schism with the Mother-Church.

For us this was the imposition of Lutheran-style sectarianism and an attack on canonicity, experience and practice. Excommunication, dividing faithful Russian Orthodox into two separate groups, was unacceptable to us who had strived so long for unity. We are Orthodox Christians, not Donatist schismatics. As we had no desire to belong to a right-wing American sect which is what ROCOR had become, we carefully discussed what our canonical path would be and made discreet enquiries. Finally, after disappointment with the response of the ROC, on 16 February 2022, after four hours of negotiations with the Romanian Orthodox Church involving the chief canonical adviser of His Beatitude Patriarch Daniel, our deanery of twelve clergy, six parishes and church buildings, some 5,000 people, 99.5% of those who had sought canonical refuge, were received into the local Romanian Metropolia, which is three times larger than the whole of ROCOR.

Our theological conscience was unable to agree to being part of a schism. Thus, we entered with joy into the four-million strong Synod of eight bishops under Metropolitan Joseph (Pop) of Western and Southern Europe of the Patriarchate of Romania. It seems then that the ROC wishes to abandon its centuries-old practice of receiving Non-Orthodox by chrismation, or confession and communion, that is, by economy. This was the case of the future martyrs, Tsarina Alexandra and Grand Duchess Elizabeth, received by the future St John of Kronstadt by chrismation. More recently, in the 1970s both Metr Antony of Sourozh (ROC) and the now St Sophrony the Athonite (Patriarchate of Constantinople), both of whom I knew well, publicly rejected the reception of Non-Orthodox into the Orthodox Church by rebaptism. It seems to us that the denial of this issue of principle preceded the catastrophe of the ROC that befell it eight days later.

For within eight days of our transfer to the Romanian Orthodox Church, the ROC fell into the pastoral disaster of multiple divisions in countries outside the Russian Federation, as the conflict in the Ukraine began. At a time when the probably future President of the USA has chosen a conscious Catholic, Senator J D Vance, a man close to the Orthodox Faith, as his running mate, therefore the probable future Vice-President and possibly the succeeding President of the USA in 2028, this is serious. Senator Vance is a friend of the ROC and has openly stated that the Ukraine must make peace with Russia, returning Russian territory to the Russian Federation. This Catholic Senator has denounced the persecution of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under Metropolitan Onufry by the Kiev regime and also appears to support the dissolution of NATO. Does the Russian Orthodox Church want Senator Vance to believe that it considers that Catholics are unbaptised?

 

 

The Boomerang Returns

Assassination Season

Assassination season is here again. All the potential victims are patriots of their countries. The American globalists and their Ukrainian proxies first tried to assassinate and regime change Putin (in July 2014, but they shot down MH17 instead), then Erdogan (in 2016 by the Americans, but saved by Putin), then Fico in Slovakia (in 2024, perhaps also by the Ukrainians and it nearly succeeded), then Orban (by the Ukrainians again, under Brussels orders?) and now Trump (some say by the Ukrainians again). Many now claim that ‘the lone gunman’ was in fact at least two shooters, one possibly on top of a water-tower or else from inside a building. (Snipers usually work together).

As with the assassination of Kennedy, at least two snipers also tried to kill Trump and this was a plot of the Deep State Washington elite. They have only used Biden as their puppet (what better puppet than a senile old man, who will let you do whatever he wants). And they have only used a mentally deranged youth as their ‘patsy’, as the Americans say, killing him to make sure that he did not tell the truth afterwards (like Oswald before him). Was the other sniper (snipers) Ukrainian? Maybe. Whatever the exact truth, and we may never know it, if we are to believe Trump’s own words, he appears to have changed, realising that he is alive only by the grace of God, ‘anointed’. It is the hand of God indeed, a near death experience that has prevented the nuclear war that the Biden regime was threatening.

The USA

The attempt to kill Trump has killed Biden and now it is Biden, not Putin, who is being regime-changed. The boomerang has returned and it is Biden who is being regime-changed. The Liberal Fascists of the Soros-Schwab Globalist Party are seeing their dream slipping through their fingers. Destiny means that Trump has to serve a greater purpose: Peace and Reconciliation. He can now ignore the neocon wing of the Republicans, unlike with his huge mistakes of 2016-2020. And if they try to kill him again, Vance, a sincere Christian half the age of Trump, will be the next President. And that would be even worse for them. Trump is the only candidate who can reverse the calamitous course of the US, which consists of military disasters in Eurasia and moral depravity at home.

President Trump will end the NATO war in the Ukraine and Vice-President Vance will ensure that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under Metr Onufry will no longer be persecuted and see its thousands of stolen churches returned. It is the end of the road for the fake Phanariot gangster ‘Church’ in the Ukraine. President Trump will not lose face when he ends it on Russia’s terms, because he will point out, correctly, that this was not his war, but Biden’s war. Therefore, he can let Russia win without humiliating himself and Non-Globalist America, but humiliate Biden and the powers behind his throne instead. It means that the acting President (or actor-President) Zelensky and his Neo-Nazis are also finished, since they are only Globalist puppets.

Europe

The Hungarian leader, Viktor Orban, is today the only statesman and diplomat left in Europe. As such, he could lead a Confederation of Orthodox-Hapsburg-Ottoman South-East Europe, from Hungary to Bosnia-Herzegovina, Austria to Cyprus, Slovakia to Turkey, Croatia to Greece, Bulgaria to Czechia, Moldova to Serbia, Slovenia to Albania, Romania to Macedonia, into BRICS. This would link South-East Europe with China – indeed Belarus has been linked with China by joining the SCO (Shanghai Co-operation Organisation) and is carrying out joint Belarusian-Chinese military exercises near the Polish border. Belarus has turned its back on Poland and the West, which wanted to regime-change it and destroy it.

As the Ukraine, where war still rages because of the refusal of the masses of Russians and Ukrainians alike to repent, breaks up in civil disorder and Kiev troops surrender, the war will end. Will Zelensky be able to flee in time to save his skin? With the former Ukraine joining the Union State of the Russian Federation and Belarus and South-East Europe also gone to BRICS, this will leave the two parts of remaining Western third of Europe in its self-imposed isolation. The largely ex-Protestant North, from Britain through Scandinavia and Poland to the Baltics and Finland, and the largely ex-Catholic South-West, from Benelux to Germany, France, Iberia and Italy. In order to survive, if this is what they want, both North and South-West will have to find their way back to their roots.

England

A case in point is England. For decades the British/’Norman’ opponents of the independence and freedom of England have ferociously predicted that in such a case Great Britain will become Little England, as we saw in the hysteria of those who oppose Brexit. This is the nonsense of self-justification. It all depends on your definition of ‘Greatness’. Thus, in the USA, perhaps those who want to make America great again (MAGA) realise that this no longer means bullying the rest of the world, overthrowing democratically-chosen governments, exploiting other countries and forcing them into sexual perversion. Perhaps Greatness means entering into harmony with other countries, replacing Unilateralism with Multilateralism, replacing Global Liberal Fascism with Popular Traditional Patriotism.

The choice between Great Britain and Little England is a false question. Like America, England can be Great again, a Great England. The last time England was Great was under King Alfred the Great (849-899). For Greatness is not in bullying others and invading their countries, but in defending spiritual and moral values and in working together with others. As we have long suggested, England should become part of a Local Confederation with a reunited Ireland, Scotland and Wales, to be called IONA, the Isles of the North Atlantic. Such a Confederation could then join BRICS. The present Starmer, elected by 20% of the electorate, like the unelected Sunak before him, is only a temporary puppet of the globalists, the agent of the Establishment, the City, the BBC and MI5. The future, like it or not, is Farage, one of President Trump’s best friends.

The Great Cleansing of the Church

At my age, three years ago, when it had seemed that all had been won, I was called on to steer  our parishes in the ship of the church in this part of England away from schism and towards canonicity in the mainstream. Our six parishes, and the others to come, had to avoid the deep mud that both the Patriarchate of Moscow and the Patriarchate of Constantinople had mired themselves in. We looked and look to those Local Churches, the vast majority, to steer the Church towards a genuine Council, unmanipulated by the political extremes of both Russian and Greek nationalists. Our churches were saved from the American schism.

The Russian, Constantinopolitan and other Local Churches are yet to be cleansed of sexual perverts, psychopaths, corrupt thieves and schismatics, like the one in London. For decades they have reigned almost unopposed. Patriarch Kyrill, is surrounded by such traitors. That is why he needs our prayers every day, to save him from them. But the time of the ‘lavender mafias’, as the Americans call them, is over. It is all coming out now, first in England, announcing the disaster in the Ukraine, and now in Hungary. Not just the whole Russian Church is to be reshaped now, but the whole of the Orthodox Church, all 16 (for now) Local Churches.

The World

The First World War lasted four years, from 1914-18, the Second began exactly 25 years after the First and went from 1939-1945, the Third also began exactly 25 years after the Second, but was a War of spiritual and moral degeneration which went from 1964 to 2014. The Fourth World War, which began exactly 50 years after the Third, has gone on for ten years, long enough. After the coup in Kiev in 2014, which opened the War and followed with covid, which killed millions of innocent people, the warriors continued their War in the Ukraine. Two and a half years later, that episode of the Fourth World War is ending.

Some eight years ago we wrote a long article called Beneath the Double-Headed Eagle: For Humanity, Truth, Justice and Prosperity. It dealt with the Restored Tricontinental Empire and the Imperial Alliance of the World’s 180 Sovereign Nations. We now know that that Alliance is for now called BRICS. After the ridiculous 75th Anniversary NATO Summit, which turned into a funeral ceremony for it, and amid the incredible decadence of the EU and the UK, a Parliament of the BRICS Alliance, which will replace the now redundant UN, is on the cards. As for the future Council of the Church, who will call it? The coming Tsar.

Archpriest Andrew Phillips

City of Colchester

6/19 July 2024

Trump

I am just old enough to remember the assassination of J F Kennedy. I did not understand what was happening then, but my parents told me that the act was typical of a country of cowboys, but they were also sad because Kennedy was a man who, they said, ‘could have changed things’. Perhaps my parents were thinking about Kennedy’s reluctance to make war and so enrich the US military industrial complex, which Eisenhower had a little before warned Americans about.

Now we have the attempted assassination of one who is highly likely to be the next US President. A turn of his head saved him. In England, for the moment, hate figures get drinks thrown in their face. Not in the USA. However, given the hate speech against Farage in the Establishment media, his assassination would not be surprising, even in non-cowboy England. Neither is the widely predicted attempted assassination of Trump surprising. Senior Democrat politicians had, indirectly, been calling for it, as also mainstream media journalists. Having failed to imprison him, some wanted to kill him.

Spiritually speaking, how do we understand this? Trump is hardly a man of piety. Would God save him? A man of his financial and sexual disorders? A man who for four years allowed the 100% Clinton-Obama Democrats’ policy of arming the Ukraine in order to weaken, destroy and dismember Russia to continue?

However, Trump did say something else about the Ukraine more recently. He said that he could bring peace to the Ukraine within 24 hours. Paradoxically, people who call for peace are always the victims of violence. But they are also protected by God. A turn of his head. ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God’.

Ironically, however, in order to make peace, we have to fight, fight, fight.

Fight against the Deep State/Establishment and fight for Nation and Family.

Fight against the corruption and homosexualisation of the State and fight for justice and humanity.

Fight against the corruption and homosexualisaton of the Church and fight for Truth and Love.

The Bulgarians Rout the ‘Phanar Lobby’: Next in Line – the ‘Lavender Lobby’

https://ruskline.ru/news_rl/2024/07/03/bolgary_razgromili_fanarskoe_lobbi

 

The following article is a translation of the above Russian article, published in Moscow on 4 July by the well-known Church journalist Anatoly Stepanov. It clearly outlines how by choosing a new Patriarch, the Bulgarian Church has come to support the canonical Church in the Ukraine under Metropolitan Onufry. Thus, it has for the moment defeated the pro-Phanariot lobby and its fake and schismatic ‘Church in the Ukraine’ (OCU), whose main sponsor is the atheistic US State Department. However, it also shows that the US-controlled liberal/ecumenist/pro-Catholic/pseudo-intellectual/celibate lobby which is trying to split the Church is also profoundly homosexual. This is not news for some of us, but it will be to many.

Moreover, this split is not a Greek-Russian split, for apart from the very well-known homosexual metropolitans, archbishops and clerics within the Patriarchate of Constantinople, there are also many others of other nationalities, such as Bulgarians and Russians. Such are also part of this homosexual (‘lavender’) lobby, for instance the notorious but only recently defrocked Moscow Abbot Peter Yeremeev. He was allowed for years and years to continue his activities quite openly in Moscow to the scandal of the faithful. As the article hints, but does not dare say openly, he and others were and are protected by powerful clerical friends of the same narcissistic ‘variety’, who, moreover, as we well know, are also very active outside Russia in corrupting Church life with their boyfriends and persecuting the faithful. Here is a translation of the article:

 

On Sunday June 30, the election of the Primate of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church (BOC) was held. This attracted the close attention of Orthodox observers and the public not only in Bulgaria. And no wonder, because the fate of not only the future of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, but also the future of all world Orthodoxy was being decided.

On the eve of the elections, we witnessed open interference in the internal affairs of the BOC by the Patriarchate of Constantinople. On May 19 an extraordinary event took place: a group of Bulgarian hierarchs headed by the most influential in Bulgaria, Metropolitan Nicholas (Sebastianov) of Plovdiv, visited the Patriarchate of Constantinople and openly concelebrated with representatives of the schismatic Orthodox Church in the Ukraine (OCU).

This was not only a challenge to the Bulgarian Church, which, as you know, does not recognise the legitimacy of the OCU, but is also a revelation of the future course of the BOC. And then Patriarch Bartholomew was invited (it is not clear on whose behalf, since there was no decision of the Synod) to take part in the ceremony of the election of His Holiness the Patriarch of Bulgaria and his enthronement.

It was a public act of interference. And how many behind-the-scenes attempts to exert influence, which, for sure, took place both on the part of the American embassy and on the part of ‘our overseas partners’, as the Russian Department of External Church Relations (DECR) has long called Constantinople, which has long been under the control of the United States.

Therefore, many anxiously awaited the decision of the Council of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, which was supposed to elect its Primate. On the eve of the final voting, as is known, the Synod of the BOC elected three bishops as candidates for the post of Primate of the Church – Metropolitan Grigory (Tsvetkov) of Vrachansky, who acted as Locum Tenens, Metropolitan Gabriel (Dinev) of Lovech and Metropolitan Daniel (Nikolov) of Vidin.

According to all forecasts, experts gave preference to Metropolitan Gregory, who was considered as a kind of compromise figure, albeit a conditional compromise, since his sympathies for the Phanar were well-known. However, unexpectedly, in the second round of the final voting, Metropolitan Daniel (Nikolov) of Vidin won, for whom 69 members of the Council voted, Metropolitan Gregory received 66 votes in his support. In the first round, Metropolitan Gregory received 64 votes, Metropolitan Daniel – 51 votes, and Metropolitan Gabriel – 19 votes (several ballots were declared invalid).

The decision of the Council became a sensation for many, a joyful sensation. It testifies to the fact that the supporters of canonical Orthodoxy, and it was from these positions that Metropolitan Daniel always spoke, turned out to be in the majority in the Bulgarian Orthodox Church and preferred to have as their Patriarch a person who, on the eve of the elections, again clearly and unequivocally outlined his position on the rejection of the Ukrainian schismatics. Moreover, he was the only candidate for Patriarch who spoke directly on this key question

Of course, the results of the vote testify to the shaky balance of power in the Bulgarian Orthodox Church: 69 votes against 66 is the clearest evidence of this.Nevertheless, the decision of the Council is final, and the Bulgarian Orthodox Church has a Primate who will defend canonical rules and norms and will not allow the Phanar to establish control over the BOC and deepen the schism in world Orthodoxy.

However, it is clear to everyone that the new Patriarch Daniel is receiving a very difficult inheritance, and his unequivocal rejection of the schismatic actions of the Patriarchate of Constantinople will not go unanswered. And we are already seeing the latter answers in the form of dirty tricks. Patriarch Bartholomew, apparently dissatisfied with the results of the choice of the Bulgarian Orthodox, refused to serve the first Divine Liturgy with his newly elected brother, went home, demonstratively leaving his representative, an archimandrite, to concelebrate.

Moreover, he is one who has a very dubious reputation – Archimandrite Kharalampy (Nichev), who was once a cleric of the BOC, but was expelled after a scandal, but was accepted in his present rank in Constantinople. At the same time, this same Archimandrite Kharalampy has a reputation as a person who belongs to the ‘lavender lobby’. Moreover, during the first Divine Liturgy of Patriarch Daniel, Archimandrite Kharalampy, being the senior priest by consecration, led the service as a representative of the clergy.

There will certainly be many more such dirty tricks on the part of the Phanar. But they do not pose a danger, but an attempt to provoke a schism in the BOC from among the bishops and priests dissatisfied with the election of Patriarch Daniel is a more terrible danger. And given the results of the vote, almost half were dissatisfied. It is clear that there is a long distance from discontent to a change of jurisdiction and an attempt to split, but the problem is serious. His Holiness Patriarch Daniel will obviously have to exert a great deal of effort to prevent a split in the BOC. Therefore, it is very likely that he will take some conciliatory actions and steps first of all.

It is very likely that the opposition to the new Patriarch will be led by the already mentioned and very influential Metropolitan Nicholas of Plovdiv, who has extensive connections in political circles (there are rumours that his father served in the security service of the Communist leader of Bulgaria Todor Zhivkov, i.e. he was not the least person at that time). Metropolitan Nicholas has recently become a leader of the pro-Phanar policy in the BOC.

Metropolitan Nicholas is a visible embodiment of the failures of the policy ‘of an Orthodox direction’ of the Department for External Church Relations (DECR) of the Moscow Patriarchate, which for a long time banked on him. And it seems that there were reasons for this, in addition to the family ties of the Metropolitan of Plovdiv. He was educated at the Moscow Theological Academy and for a long time demonstratively supported pro-Russian positions in the Bulgarian episcopate. In addition to the DECR, as far as we know, our Embassy also banked on him. So this is proof of the failure of all Russian diplomacy, not only ecclesiastical. As a result, we have now received a deafening slap in the face since Metropolitan Nicholas has become the main propagandist of the Phanar in the BOC, and the DECR and the Russian embassy seem to have got it all wrong.

Moreover, Metropolitan Nicholas not only changed his political orientation, but also committed openly offensive actions against His Holiness Patriarch Kirill. We are talking about his arbitrary restoration to the ecclesiastical dignity of the former hegumen Peter Yeremeev, who was banned in the Russian Church, who has recently been seen several times at the Divine services of Metropolitan Nicholas. And this is not just an insult to His Holiness Patriarch Kirill personally, who approved the decision to defrock the former hegumen Peter, but also in fact the creation of a serious problem in relations between the Bulgarian and Russian Orthodox Churches…..

Hegumen Pyotr Eremeev is a notorious personality. In addition to the fact that he held high positions in the structures of the Russian Orthodox Church, being the abbot of the historic Vysokopetrovsky Monastery in the centre of the capital and the rector of the Russian Orthodox University, he is widely known in narrow circles as one of the most prominent faces of the so-called ‘lavender lobby’ in the Russian Orthodox Church. Believers whispered about this and spoke with sorrow. And his ban from serving was perceived with great satisfaction by many Orthodox believers as a sure sign of the cleansing of the Church from the ‘lavender filth’.

Therefore, the story of the former abbot Peter testifies to the fact that the new Bulgarian Patriarch, in addition to the ‘Phanar lobby’, has another dangerous and influential opponent – the ‘lavender lobby’. It is no coincidence that in Bulgaria they whisper about the non-traditional sexual orientation of Metropolitan Nicholas of Plovdiv. It is also surprising and sad that Russian Church diplomats considered him to be the main supporter of the Russian Orthodox Church in Bulgaria.

By the way, as informed people say, the strange inclinations of the former hegumen Peter began to manifest themselves after his studies in Bulgaria, where he met and became friends with the then vicar of the Bulgarian Patriarch, Bishop Nicholas (Sebastianov) of Znepol. These unhealthy inclinations led Pyotr Yeremeev into a scandal with students of the Moscow Academy, which was the reason for his exile from Moscow to Khabarovsk in the Far East. But then he returned to the capital, supposedly cured of the sodomite disease, a story which turned out to be untrue.

Of course, we rejoice at the election of the new Bulgarian Patriarch, especially realising that we are witnessing the manifestation of the action of Divine Providence in history, which inspires us with hope in these desperate times. But let us be aware that Patriarch Daniel faces the most difficult trials ahead. Therefore, it would be right for all of us to at least sigh before God for Patriarch Daniel of Bulgaria, who is embarking on the difficult path of struggle for the Church of Christ and for the unity of world Orthodoxy.

 

Collapse and Victory

Now in July, the Ukrainian front lines are collapsing under the far superior, Russian-led military forces. The poor Ukrainians have virtually no air power, weak artillery, relatively few drones and often poorly trained and press-ganged troops, thousands of them fresh out of prison, so short is manpower. Some 14,000 of them are being killed or wounded every week. Little wonder that many are surrendering or else running away.

It is a guessing game as to how long the stumbling and unconstitutional Kiev dictatorship can continue. No-one thinks that the tragedy can continue beyond the end of this year, some say it will end before the US elections in early November, some say it will end by the end of the summer. But God knows.

Such is the situation in the Russian-led Eastern half of Europe. And what of the situation in the US-led Western half of Europe, notably among the Big Three, France, UK and Germany, each governed by a political pygmy?

In France the narcissistic ‘Jupiter’, Macron, is being deposed, even though he had imagined that French people would massively vote for him as he thought he was a genius. In reality, one of the most detested French leaders ever, who thoroughly despised the French people, he only ever loved one person, himself, and nobody ever thought he was a genius.

In the UK, formally EU-free despite the equally narcissistic Cameron who had imagined that all would support him, a Second Reformation, the first for 500 years, is under way. This Reformation sets out to defeat the corrupt Establishment and its unelected technocrats like Sunak and Starmer. Freedom and Fairness, the highest English values, are being promoted by the opposition to the Establishment, what in the USA is called ‘the Deep State’. If this protest movement in the UK eventually succeeds and if in the USA Trump defeats the present senile ‘leader of the Western world’, the dysfunctional US ‘President’, and then removes the puppeteering clique behind him, there will be a new honeymoon between the US and the UK, a real special relationship.

In bankrupted and deindustrialising Germany, the highly unpopular Scholz puppet-coalition is tottering. Its arrogant and insulting attitude towards China is catastrophic, fatal for German industry. It is doubtful if the minority Scholz regime will outlast the coming Russian victory in the Ukraine, which Scholz has got all wrong.

So much for the Big Three of Western Europe.  As for the rest, Prime Minister Orban is launching a new Sovereign Alliance of European Patriots – in Hungary, Slovakia, Austria (the Freedom Party), Germany (AdF), Czechia, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Romania, and soon France (The National Rally) and the UK. The rest will follow. Freedom is in the air.

Meanwhile, we in White Russian East Anglia live under the protection of our unconquerable saints in our holy places, in Bury St Edmunds, Hoxne, Ely, Walsingham, Sheringham and Wroxham, from the Tsar’s Kings Lynn to the Orthodox Colchester of Constantine and Helen. With our cottage culture of Suffolk farmhouses, Alfred Munnings, sweet peas, rose gardens and Royal Albert, we shall not only resist, we shall also be victorious.

The Russian Federation Offers Peace for the Last Time

On 14 June President Putin gave a very generous and face-saving last opportunity to the US elite and their vassals to make peace in the Ukraine, where they are fighting against the Russian Federation. This last chance peace offer is a repetition of and development of all those made continuously from 2014 on. This last offer consisted once more of the condition of the neutrality, demilitarisation and denazification of the Ukraine and its recognition of the five Russian provinces in the east and south whose Russian inhabitants have by referendum already chosen to join the Russian Federation.

This peace offer was at once dismissed by the Western elite in favour of their plan to escalate the anti-Russian war further. ‘Make war, not peace’, said Washington’s messenger-boy Boris Johnson in Kiev in early April 2022, using as his pretext the amateurishly British-staged ‘massacre’ in Bucha, selected only as its name is similar to the English word ‘butcher’. So they put paid to the already initialled Istanbul peace agreement between the Ukraine and Russia. Peace was never on the Washington agenda. In 2019 Washington had already published its plan to destroy and dismantle Russia completely, though this had been its scheming ever since 1991.

In reality, this intention of destroying Russian unity actually goes back to the British-orchestrated overthrow of the Tsar in 1917. That tragic overthrow, which led directly to the massacres of Lenin and Stalin, was greeted by the then Prime Minister Lloyd George in the London Parliament at the time as ‘the achievement of one of our aims’. However, it had in fact been the intention of the Victorian Imperialists as early as the 1840s, which had led to the British invasion of Russia in 1854.

After all, the American Empire only inherited and continued the British Empire, the turning point and transatlantic handover of power going back to Milner’s Round Table Movement agreement of 1916. That provided US backing for the British overthrow of the Tsar and at once the US entry into World War I, thus the US replacing Russia. Of course, the present Western ‘narrative’ (a new word for fairy-tale or parallel world) is that Russia wants to recreate the Soviet Union and invade all of Europe. This is nonsense. The failed Marxist experiment in the USSR with its buffer zone in Eastern Europe to protect it from continual Western invasions is dead. Sadly, the equally failed US Empire experiment is not quite over.

When will the tragedy in the Ukraine end? The end must be close, but no politician can say when; only a psychiatrist can do that. With the US rejection of the peace plan, a rejection swiftly followed by the rejection of the same by US NATO client-states, the US will soon lose its war against the Federation. The latter has now been obliged by Western stubbornness to reject the Russian ultimatum and Russia will now take control of the whole of the Ukraine. And as a result, the US elite and Co will lose face. And the whole of Western Europe will never be the same again. This transformation will affect the Church. See the next commentary.

 

Patriotic National Conservatism and Social Justice or Anti-Patriotic Cosmopolitan Elitism and Social Collapse

Introduction: The World

Nowadays the exclusive US-led club of G7 countries have to meet in an isolated huddle. They have been overtaken by the far greater and inter-civilisational BRICS Alliance. According to the US World Bank, three of the four largest economies in the world are members of BRICS. These are China, India and Russia. The latter, although under 16,000 Western sanctions, has overtaken the Japanese and German economies (both members of the G7) and is rapidly catching up with India, which the USA is going to fall behind, as real economic figures for it appear.

Other members of the G7 have seen their economies overtaken by countries such as Turkey, Indonesia and Vietnam, which all want to join BRICS, but not to join the irrelevant G7 club. It is the intercontinental BRICS Alliance that has become the de facto United Nations. This is mirrored by the elitist huddle of the WEF (or rather WWEF – Western World Economic Forum) and the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum, which finished last week, attended by 136 countries, though it was almost completely unreported by the globalist Western media.

The Example of England

A long time ago Norman invaders ‘established’ their capital of aggression in the mercantile City of London, where there was money. (Later this would become the location of the Bank of England and the Stock Exchange). Having massacred or expelled the Old English nobility, they formed an alien, foreign and anti-patriotic ruling class. From this ‘Establishment’ they and their descendants created the UK, with all its exploitation and crimes. The Norman royal family replaced English royalty, brought their Norman Church with them and demolished all the Old English churches. After that, foreign royal families, French, Welsh and Scottish and their aristocratic supporters, were in control of the country.

In the 16th century this alien royalty reinvented yet another Church, murdering, torturing or exiling any who opposed it. In the early 18th century the London merchant class imported easy-to-manipulate royalty from Germany (they had previously imported royalty from the Netherlands, having beheaded and then overthrown the previous Franco-Scottish dynasty). Then they could do their will, which was to get even richer by expanding overseas. In so many ways a fake country, fake royalty and a fake Church had been evolved. Similarly, when the time came, the elitist structure developed political parties, in fact the two sides of the same Uniparty. So they invented fake political parties too.

It used to be said in the 1950s that Britain was in genteel decline, like a once prosperous relative who was now forced to wear shabby clothes for lack of money. Since then the decline has clearly accelerated. Today the ‘Norman’ political parties of the London Establishment are sinking like the Titanic, as they have betrayed the country in favour of globalist corporations. Despite their almost total control of State propaganda outlets like the BBC and the newspapers, the so-called ‘media’, they have lost control of the ‘narrative’, as they call it.

All around in the UK we see collapsing public services and infrastructure, like the vastly underfunded health and education systems, millions of people eating out of food banks, hugely overpriced and failed privatised utilities, cowboy-run electricity and gas suppliers, heavily-polluting water supplies, bankrupt local administrations, third-world roads, degraded and absurdly expensive railways, lies about Brexit so there is now even less control of borders than before, and pathetic armed forces which cannot even find recruits to run the small amounts of their often broken down military equipment.

After the Suez humiliation in 1956, Britain officially became a US satellite, a vassal. Although, at the time in the face of Communism, there was no alternative, this has turned out to be an error. The post-War settlement of the victorious industrial Superpower of the USA established itself and its allies, to become known as the G7, as the world leaders. Even the UN was set up in New York with all kinds of supposedly ‘international’ organisations, like the World Bank, the IMF, GATT (now the WTO), the ICC (International Criminal Court) and the EU, were completely under its control. But this is the past.

Conclusion: The Western World Elite

The catastrophically failed Project Ukraine has led to chaos in Western Europe, not least after the EU elections of 9 June. This is changing its highly-aggressive and Russophobic, pro-Nazi Establishment elite, which is so hated by the European peoples, who are in turn so despised by that Atlanticist elite. The globalist Sunak, a bank-teller sent by the US, and Macron, the Great (Narcissist), the new Napoleon with his globalist agenda, but in fact a bank-teller sent by the Rothschilds, in love with himself and the Parisian elite, are discredited. Meanwhile, the German Scholz is very weakened. All are self-delusional and consider that their peoples did not understand their genius. Sunak is said to be heading to the US after his forthcoming defeat and Scholz retiring to the Bavarian Alps. As for Macron, perhaps he should buy a villa on Elba or St Helena? The Western elite, which tried to export its ideology to the Ukraine is now desperate. This all compares strangely with the landslide election victory of President Putin. The ideology of the Western elite is unexportable. It is, after all, rejected even by many native Western people. For we are the source of Patriotic National Conservatism and Social Justice.

As for the equally narcissistic USA, it is now a crusader state, just like its genocidal vassal, Israel. Everywhere the elite tries to impose its ‘liberalism’ by force. However, there is nothing as intolerant as liberalism. The result is the thoroughgoing ruination of culture in the Western world and its fast collapsing Civilisation. The culprit has always been the pure pride of supremacy and infallibility. This was first proclaimed in about the Year 1075, when the Pope of Rome attributed them to himself (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictatus_papae). This ideology pf infallibility and supremacy has been handed down in history to various Western leaders, at present to the US President and the Western world which he lays claim to. He lays claims to this narcissist, Darwinist pride of supremacy and infallibility, which claims that ‘we are the ‘fittest’, the exceptional, the exclusive, the indispensable. In Christian language this is called pride, which is evil. For they are the source of Anti-Patriotic Cosmopolitan Elitism and Social Collapse.

 

 

After the Collapse of the Ukraine

Introduction

Even the wishful thinkers are now losing their self-imposed delusions and fantasies. Reality is at last dawning even on them: The Kiev regime has lost its futile ten-year old war. For some commentators it is a question hanging on till the US election in November, for others there remain only three or four months, for others only a few weeks. We do not know who is right. But what will happen when this tragic nightmare is over, when the mass killing of largely untrained Ukrainian men, sent to the front by the Kiev regime on Western orders, has stopped? What ultimately happens when the West has stopped hammering in the last nails into its own coffin?

Referenda

Obviously, all churches in Malorossija/New Ukraine stolen by violence from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church by the fake, US-founded ‘Church in the Ukraine’ with its new Protestant calendar will have to be returned and the culprits punished. Then referenda will surely have to be held all over the pre-2024 Ukraine with one vital question: Which country do you wish to belong to? The choices could be: The Russian Federation or Malorossija/New Ukraine, and in western border areas, Poland, Romania, Hungary, and possibly Belarus and Slovakia. The majority will no doubt wish to belong to the Protectorate of Malorossija/New Ukraine, with its capital in Kiev. This will have two official languages, Russian and Ukrainian.

For those who wish to leave for countries to the west, there will have to be Russian negotiations with the countries concerned first. Hungary and Romania would be advised that any new areas must remain demilitarised zones and that any NATO bases should in general be removed from their soil, although those countries could perhaps remain members of NATO for as long as that fragile organisation lasts. In the case of Romania, Moldova should also enter into the deal. Here there should also be a referendum with three choices: Do you want to join Russia (Transdnistria and Gagauzia massively will), join Romania or remain as an independent nation?

BRICS

Kazan, 22-24 October 2024. This city and date will go down in history. Here will take place the next BRICS Summit under Russian chairmanship. Here dedollarisation will take a huge step forward. Here many new countries will join BRICS, which could become the multipolar Alliance of 20, 30 or even 40 countries. This will be a turning-point. This will mean the consolidation of the Heartland, the ‘world island’ of Afro-Eurasia. For Eurasia itself contains three of the four largest economies in the world, according to the latest World Bank figures: China, India and Russia (the US is second, Russia has overtaken Japan).

Already China and Russia have formed an Alliance. Africa is on its way. Latin America too. Iran has joined, as will Afghanistan and the five stans of Central Asia. They may be followed by Mongolia, Pakistan, and Iraq. The Arab Union and Turkey may follow too. The chauvinism of the Caucasus, which has allowed outsiders to divide and rule it for so long (like that of the Balkans), is also coming to an end. Next may follow Japan and South Korea, which latter is yet to reunite with the North. Finally, even isolated Australia and Oceania will join in due course.

South-Eastern Europe

The amazing anachronism of NATO is already in disarray and will dissolve, as Trump has promised. This will leave the forty or so countries of Western Europe (Eastern Europe is Russia, Belarus and Malorossija/New Ukraine) to resolve their problems. The fact that the Danube flows into the Black Sea, which will be dominated by Russia, will mean that Hungary and Serbia will join BRICS first. This will open the whole of South-East Europe to BRICS, from Romania and Moldova to Bulgaria, from Austria (following its old partner, Hungary) to Cyprus, from Greece to ex-Yugoslavia, from Czechia and Slovakia, from Albania to Turkey. With a population of over 160 million, including Turkey (86 million), this is a viable Economic Confederation. BRICS will transform and reshape this whole region, overcoming the old chauvinism, linking the whole region to China via Eurasian Russia.

North-Eastern and North-Western Europe

This will leave North-Eastern Europe in disarray. All five countries here, Finland, Poland and the three dying and bankrupt Baltic statelets, have had complex and tragic histories with Imperial and Soviet Russia. One way out would be to ally themselves with North-Western Europe, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, England and Wales, Scotland, Ireland (soon to be reunited at last) and Iceland. These seven countries already have large numbers of economic refugees from North-Eastern Europe and also a similar (though in their case quite unjustified) fear of Russia. Once having rid themselves of their NATO-appointed puppet governments, these twelve largely post-Protestant countries could ally. Perhaps the Baltic States would at last have the courage to grant their Russian minorities basic human rights. With a population of over 160 million, these twelve countries could form an Economic Confederation.

Western Europe

Western Europe, isolated, will then need to get together. Between Germany and France the old recriminations could easily surface once more. Clearly, the time of the tyrannical, anti-democratic and failed EU with its unelected commissars will be over. Some looser organisation must replace it. However, beyond these two there are just as many again, another 150 million people, in Benelux and Switzerland and then in the South-West, Spain and Portugal, Italy and Malta. The total population of these countries is 300 million. Together, in a loose Confederation, they could at last move forward independently from Northern America.

Northern America

All these world-changing events will leave the isolated USA and Canada to sort themselves out. It is to be hoped that their new arrangements will not be violent, though in a USA with some 300 million guns in circulation, we can only fear. The huge inequalities there between very rich and very poor, black and white, are worrisome in the extreme. Canada may survive intact, but perhaps not the USA, which was united only by the incredible violence of the Civil War. If it does divide, may it be in peace.

 

 

What Will Happen to the Orthodox Church After the Fall of Washington?

The powers of this world have throughout history tried to abuse religious belief by making it into their own nationalist and ritualist institutions. This has been to camouflage and justify their nationalism, that is, their attachment to this world, their worldliness. Chinese, Indians, Jews, Greeks, Japanese, Copts, Syrians, Armenians, Arabs, Latins, Germans, Greeks, Spanish, Russians, French, British, Americans, they have all done it. These are just facts from Church history. How do Christians remain outside and resist an ideology which puts national and worldly issues above Christ, all for the sake of amassing more power and money? There are only two ways of resisting:

Either you are a Confessor, or else you are a Martyr. Thus, St Stephen the First Martyr was stoned to death by the Jews because he upset their nationalism. He was only following the prophets and St John the Baptist, who had told the nationalist King Herod the truth, and Christ Himself, Whom they crucified. Then came such Confessors as St Basil the Great and St John Chrysostom. And in the twentieth-century there were the hundreds of thousands of Martyrs all over Eastern Europe, as well as Confessors like St Nectarios of Aegina, St Luke of the Crimea, St John of Shanghai or St Paisios the Athonite. There is nothing new under the sun. The saints are always the best witnesses.

In recent centuries the Church in the Middle East and the Balkans was oppressed by Ottomans, Poles and Austro-Hungarians. Meanwhile the Russian Church was oppressed by Westernising rulers, even more so after 1917. In the nineteenth century and even before, the main Patriarchate outside Russia, the Patriarchate of Constantinople, was used as a plaything by the British and French ambassadors. The Western Powers also appointed German kinglets to rule the newly-liberated Balkan countries in their name.

Since the second half of the twentieth century, the Patriarchate of Constantinople has in the same way become the plaything of US ambassadors there. Meanwhile the Patriarchate of Moscow was being used as a plaything by the Soviet State. Neither the US State of the Soviet State was Christian. Both were, whatever the theory, in practice atheist. This situation has continued by centuries of inertia even after the end of the first so-called Cold War in 1991, but in ways even more terrible than before.

Thus, in Moscow, Stalinist centralisation has continued, repelling all Non-Russians from the Church, as Metropolitan Vladimir of Moldova openly described in his recent letter to Patriarch Kyrill. For fifty years we too were treated as second-class citizens by the same Russian Church. None of this is because this mentality has been forced on the Church by the State, but because it has become a bad reflex inside the Church. It is nothing to do with the State. For example, a fragment of Moscow, the New York ROCOR has done this too, completely discrediting itself, mistreating Non-Russians. (As one of its bishops said to me recently, ROCOR is ‘a train wreck’).  The mentality to repel all, including many Russians, has been imposed internally. The only real slavery comes from ourselves, not from others.

We can see the same mentality also in the uncanonical, US-orchestrated actions of the Patriarchate of Constantinople in the Ukraine and elsewhere since 2018. Sadly, Constantinople fell to Greek racist hatred and jealousy of Russians.  It could simply have refused to do any of its horrors. But the $25 million bribe was irresistible to the weak. Since then a second Cold War has begun, with US proxy forces trying to weaken and destroy Russia from the Ukraine. It means that the heavy burden of steering the ship of the Church has fallen to those less politicised, more free, to the now 14 other Local Churches. Their role has been dependent on the political freedom which they have.

Thus, under Communism in Eastern Europe and under the US control of the Greek Churches, the Serbian Church stood out as a beacon of relative freedom and theology. Today, in this respect the Albanian Church seems to have taken the lead as the voice of freedom, though the long-overdue visit of Metropolitan Tikhon of the Orthodox Church in America to the persecuted Ukrainian Church is also a miracle. The remaining 14 Local Churches are not all united because they do not enjoy the same measure of freedom. They are only relatively free compared to Constantinople and Moscow. For instance, the actions of the Greek Patriarchate of Constantinople have brought some of the other Local Churches into a state of internal schism.

Specifically, the Cypriot and Bulgarian Churches are now in a state of internal schism as a direct result of the US interference in Constantinople, both direct and indirect. Equally, the US-controlled Patriarchate of Alexandria and Moscow are in schism because of the latter’s interference in Africa. Other Local Churches, like the Romanian and the Georgian, which have a strong national identity, take an independent line, ignoring uncanonical Greek and uncanonical Russian alike. This is despite the attempts by the local US ambassadors, who behave like the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, to interfere in the choice of Patriarchs and policies. This independence is the only way to go. It is freedom.

However, our question is what will happen after the US stops interfering in internal Church affairs. It is our hope that, once political pressure eases, the Greek Churches in particular can take the lead and get out of political distortions and contortions, abandoning imperialist fantasies, recognising new autocephalies, notably that of the Macedonian Orthodox Church and its Diaspora. However, the Russian Church also has to give up its Soviet-style centralisation, which is its imperialist fantasy. It has to grant autocephaly to parts of the Church in now independent countries.

The shadow of the old Imperialism, Russian or Soviet, just like Greek and Latin imperialism, has cast a long shadow on Church life. Its time is up. For the Church does not consist of one Local Church ruling imperially over all the others, but of their entirety, their catholicity – all the Local Churches together. Once political meddling is over, all the Local Churches must hold a Council together. A free and canonically ordered Council, not the 2016 robber-Council farce in Crete. Then the very many long-outstanding issues between the Local Churches can at last be resolved. In freedom. May God’s Will be done!