It is clear that despite the positive events of the twenty-first century, Russia is still greatly suffering from the consequences of twentieth-century atheism, both from three generations of Marxist materialism and one generation of Capitalist materialism. Nevertheless, a spiritual and cultural renaissance is under way and may in 2016 have finally reached a tipping-point. Thus, although we may not always agree with him, the Russian political leader, inspired by the bimillennial Orthodox Christian Tradition, is now the leader of the worldwide anti-globalist movement, opposing planetary US hegemony and the One World State that it is aiming at.

The question now is if the Russian spiritual leader, the Russian Patriarch, can similarly become the leader of the worldwide anti-apostasy movement, opposing the folly of today’s atheist world? If he can, he will gain the full support of ordinary clergy, ordinary people and monastics. Some of these faithful have been hurt by treacherous, ecumenist elements in Moscow and a few of them are upset with the Patriarch. Despite this, the Patriarch of Moscow is already the de facto Oecumenical Patriarch of the Orthodox world, but that status so far depends only on numbers. How can he increase his moral and spiritual authority?

This can only happen through his confession of Orthodoxy. Here, there are two acts which would unite the Church behind him. The first act, as Metr Benjamin of Vladivostok has recently said, is to leave the All-Protestant World Council of Churches. Membership of it, as we in the Church outside Russia have always known, only discredits the Church. On leaving, we should explain why we consider it a council of the impious and its ideology heretical. The second act is to stand up at the Crete meeting in June and refuse to sign any document which betrays Orthodox dogmatics through vague, ambiguous, ecumenist and secularist language.

During Lent Patriarch Kyrill set out on this path of confession by declaring that the main heresy of modern times is the worship of man as God and that this is what lies behind the spiritual catastrophe of the West. As he further said on the news channel, NTV, on 1 May, ‘the world is heading straight for hell’. These are not the words of some local bishop, but the words of the global Christian leader, who, unlike Pope Francis, is not afraid of telling the truth. As he is such, it was at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow that the Paschal Gospel was read in 27 languages, demonstrating the universal mission of the Russian Orthodox Church.

These two acts would definitively reassure those dissidents whose confidence has been shaken by the events of January and February, that is, by the release of the ambiguous draft documents for the Crete meeting and the meeting of Pope Francis with the Patriarch in Cuba. More than this, however, they would make clear, both to the whole Orthodox Church and to the world outside the Church, that the global spiritual leader of the contemporary world is the Russian Patriarch, who is standing up to Western apostasy and its deification of fallen mankind. In this way we can find the path of salvation amid the chaos and folly of today’s world.