Monthly Archives: February 2025

Fourteen into Twenty-Four: The Patriarchs and First Hierarchs of the Fourteen Local Churches Meet on Mt Athos, 8 February 2026

On 6, 7 and 8 February 2026 the Patriarchs of Constantinople, New Jerusalem, Bucharest, Belgrade, Sofia, Tbilisi, Antioch, Alexandria and Jerusalem, and the First Hierarchs of the five other Local Churches, of Skopje, Warsaw, Nicosia, Prague and Tirana, together with Metropolitan Tikhon of the OCA, the Metropolitans of Kiev, Minsk, Riga, Uzhhorod and Kampala, the Metropolitans of the two Metropolias in Moldova, and senior hierarchs from the Diaspora, together with their delegations, met in the Skete of St Andrew. This church, built by the Russian Tsar Alexander II, is the largest church on the multinational Holy Mountain, which is under the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Constantinople.

They were at last able to meet in freedom to resolve the only two issues which have troubled and divided the Church for generations. Firstly, they met to put an end to the schisms between the Patriarchates of New Jerusalem, Constantinople and Alexandria. Secondly, they met to grant canonical status to the many millions of Orthodox living in, and to Orthodox who for generations have been born in, Western Europe, the Americas and Oceania, entrusting their destiny in each case to organisation by the Patriarchate with the most Orthodox living on those territories, with the guidance of the Mother-Churches of the minorities.

By repentance for past errors, including allowing the CIA to penetrate the Patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria and New Jerusalem, directly through allowing its agents to be planted inside them, and indirectly through adopting its oligarchic mentality, and by the prayers of those present and of the monastics of the Holy Mountain of Athos, they reached the following resolutions:

New Jerusalem

As many will know, before this meeting the Patriarchate of Moscow and All Rus had been renamed the Patriarchate of New Jerusalem and All Rus and its headquarters had been moved to the New Jerusalem Monastery outside Moscow. It also refrocked all Russian Orthodox clergy who had been defrocked for political reasons since 24 February 2022 in Russia, Lithuania, Western Europe and elsewhere.

In accord with the Church of Constantinople, the newly-appointed Patriarch of New Jerusalem and All Rus and his Synod granted autocephaly to three new Local Churches, whose faithful had for centuries lived on its canonical territory. These are:

The Kievan Rus Orthodox Church (Kievan Rus is the new country established last year, whose territory corresponds to most of the western and central parts of the old Soviet Ukraine), headed by Metropolitan Onufry of Kiev. All Orthodox in Kievan Rus are called on to join this new Church, as the Patriarchate of Constantinople has now given up its jurisdiction there.

The Belarussian Orthodox Church, headed by the Metropolitan of Minsk.

The Baltic Orthodox Church (covering the territories of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland), headed by the new Metropolitan of Riga. All Orthodox in Finland, Estonia and Lithuania are called on to join these new Churches, as the Patriarchate of Constantinople has now given up its jurisdiction there.

Additionally, in accord with the other Patriarchs present, the new Patriarch of New Jerusalem and All Rus and his Synod granted autocephaly to a fourth new Local Church, the Carpatho-Rus and Hungarian Orthodox Church, whose territory covers the Zakarpattia province of the old Soviet Ukraine and Hungary. It is headed by the Metropolitan of Uzhhorod and Budapest, but has deaneries for Greeks, Serbs and other Orthodox nationalities present in Hungary under the new Church.

Constantinople

As many will know, before this meeting the new Patriarch of Constantinople, previously the Archbishop of Athens, and his Synod had moved the headquarters of the Patriarchate from Istanbul in Turkiye to Thessaloniki in Greece, with the absorption of the Greek Orthodox Church. This move was financed by a very generous donation made by the government of the Russian Federation for its infrastructure costs. However, Turkiye, together with Greece, remain the canonical territories of the now Greece-based Patriarchate of Constantinople and a bishop remains in Istanbul.

The Patriarchate of Constantinople recognised the (North) Macedonian Orthodox Church as an autocephalous Local Church.

The Patriarchate of Constantinople recognised the autocephaly granted by the Patriarchate of New Jerusalem to the four new Churches on the territories of Kievan Rus, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland, Carpatho-Rus and Hungary, and will recognise any autocephaly granted in the future, if necessary, to Orthodox in Central Asia, Japan, China and Korea by the Patriarchate of New Jerusalem and All Rus. All Non-Russian Orthodox on those territories must already join the local jurisdictions of the Patriarchate of New Jerusalem there in their own deaneries.

It recognised that the Patriarchate of Bucharest has sole authority to establish a Western European Orthodox Church for Orthodox living in its at present 21 countries of Iceland, Ireland, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, France, Monaco, Germany, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria, Portugal, Spain, Andorra, Italy, San Marino, Malta, since Bucharest has by far the largest number of Orthodox on those territories. It will be headed by the Romanian Metropolitan of Paris and Western Europe, but will have dioceses and deaneries for Greeks, Russians of all three Russian groups, Kievan Russians, Moldovans, Serbs, Bulgarians, Georgians and other Orthodox nationalities in Western Europe.

In return, all Local Orthodox Churches recognised that the Patriarchate of Constantinople has sole authority to establish a new Northern America Orthodox Church (USA, Canada, Greenland, Bermuda and St Pierre et Miquelon) and a new Local Oceanian Orthodox Church, in concert with all the Local Churches represented on those territories, since it has by far the largest flock there. Notably the Patriarchate of New Jerusalem cedes jurisdiction of its own parishes, withdraws the Tomos of Autocephaly of the OCA, and cedes jurisdiction of the churches of the OCA and ROCOR in Northern America, including the abolition of the OCA Synod in Washington and the ROCOR Synod in New York, to the Patriarchate of Constantinople. However, the first First Hierarch of the Northern American Orthodox Church will be Metr Tikhon, formerly of the OCA. Orthodox of Non-Greek nationality both in Northern America and Oceania, under the Metropolitan of Sydney and All Oceania, will be cared for in their own dioceses and deaneries under the new Local Church.

Alexandria

The new Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria and his Synod ceded jurisdiction of all African countries, except for Egypt, to the Patriarchate of New Jerusalem, thus returning to its Patriarchal territory of 100 years ago. All clergy defrocked by the Patriarchate of Alexandra for political reasons since 2019 were refrocked. In return, the government of the Russian Federation made a very generous donation to the Patriarchate of Alexandria and to St Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai to continue Church life in Egypt and Sinai.

In accord with the other Patriarchs present, the Patriarch of New Jerusalem and All Rus and his Synod jointly granted autocephaly to all Orthodox on the territory of Africa, outside Egypt, founding the African Orthodox Church, headed by the Metropolitan of Kampala and his Synod of African bishops.

Antioch

The Patriarch of Antioch and his Synod was granted sole authority to establish a Latin America and Caribbean Orthodox Church, as it has by far the largest flock there. Orthodox of Non-Arab nationality in Latin America and the Caribbean will be cared for in their own dioceses and deaneries under the new Local Church.

Bucharest

The Patriarch of Bucharest and his Synod and the Patriarch of New Jerusalem and All Rus and his Synod jointly granted autocephaly to all Orthodox on the territory of Moldova, forming the Moldovan Orthodox Church. The Patriarchate of New Jerusalem refrocked all Orthodox clergy, who had been defrocked for political reasons for joining the former Metropolia of Bessarabia.

As mentioned above, the Patriarch of Bucharest and his Synod was granted sole authority to establish a new Local Church of the 21 countries of Western Europe (see above). Orthodox of Non-Romanian nationality will be cared for by self-governing dioceses and deaneries of their respective Local Churches, but under the new Western European Orthodox Church.

In this way, the number of Autocephalous Orthodox Churches, now standing at 20 after the absorption of the Greek Orthodox Church into the Patriarchate of Constantinople and of the OCA into the Northern American Orthodox Church, and the foundation of the six new Autocephalous Churches, will be brought to 24 Local Churches, once the four new Diaspora Churches have been established within the next twelve months.

The ending of the schism between New Jerusalem, Constantinople and Alexandria was confirmed in the church of St Andrew by the concelebration of all those present on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son, 8 February 2026. This meeting is already being called ‘The First Athonite Council’ and ‘The Bread and Water Council’, since that was the only food and drink provided during the three days for the participants in the Council.

 

 

 

 

Hope Without Prayer = Leadership Without Authority

Foreword: Fukuyama 0 Huntingdon 1

The End of History and the Last Man was the 1992 work of the US thinker Francis Fukuyama (born 1952). In it he proposes the victory of US/Western liberal Globalism, expressing the myth that it is universal (originally a French myth) and so must be adopted by all. In 1993, another US academic, born exactly a generation earlier, the late Samuel P. Huntingdon (1927-2008), proposed another world view in his ‘The Clash of Civilisations’, the view of a multipolar world of nine civilisations. The events in the Ukraine since 2022 and the rapid development of BRICS since have proved Huntingdon right. The Unipolar world of one only Great Power, the USA, was only ‘a moment’, now over, as the US Secretary of State has at last publicly recognised.

Fundamentally, the argument between the two academics was between Centralisation and Decentralisation, Unipolar Globalism and Multipolar Sovereignty. Sovereignty has won in Washington and the transitional, but still anti-Globalist, figure of Trump is retreating from the overextended US Empire to its natural sphere of influence in a united Northern America, consisting of the USA, Canada and Greenland, with island possessions extending from Hawaii to Bermuda. (The second-rate UK will quickly cede Canada and Bermuda). Greenland is falling into Trump’s pocket and he has already talked to the Premier of Alberta in Canada, Danielle Smith, whose grandfather was Carpatho-Russian. (In Canada any province has the right to leave that ‘Dominion’).

Huntingdon’s Error

However, Huntingdon still made one error. Huntingdon’s error was not his analysis that the world is multicivilisational, but that he wanted the West to go back to being a reactionary conservative institution in order to survive alongside the other world civilisations. Having recognised that Western Secularism is merely one among many civilisations, he just wanted to go back to his youth, to the ‘golden age’ before Vietnam, when the USA was the undisputed leader of the Western world (the ‘Free World’, as it absurdly called itself), in fact, it was the imperialist boss of the whole Non-Communist world. However, its Civilisation was already bankrupt, because it had already wandered very far from its roots, which it then renounced.

And since Huntingdon’s time in 1993, over the last thirty years the remains of Western Civilisation have proved their bankruptcy. The only solution is for Western Civilisation to return radically, not to a generation or two ago, to Huntingdon’s youth, which just means being old-fashioned, but to return to its roots in the first millennium. And that means a spiritual solution, which is exactly what we have been advocating for the last fifty years. Whether the West is actually willing to return from its spiritual apostasy and decadence, or not, is another question. For the last fifty years the West has just gone down to the bottom, the floor of hell. Will it remain there or will it start its ascent? Only the history of the future will answer this question.

 

Introduction: Hope and Prayer

According to cynics, hope is like a carrot which is dangled in front of a donkey. Therefore, they say, we should give up the carrot of hope and start acting independently instead, doing things for ourselves, not being drawn forward by empty promises. Christians say that it is not hope that we should give up, it is being a donkey that we should give up. For a donkey is one who hopes blindly, because he does not pray. Hope without prayer is the hope of the donkey. In other words, we should accompany hope with prayer, which alone raises us above the level of animals, such as donkeys, and alone makes us into human-beings using our immortal souls. And hope without prayer is like being a leader without authority, of which more below.

The Collapse of the Kiev Regime

According to the anti-Russian Mediazona organisation, the conflict in the Ukraine has now led to 100,000 dead on the Russian side, that is, 100,000 dead eastern Ukrainian and Russian Federation soldiers. However, what Mediazona agents do not add is that the number of Ukrainian dead and crippled totals over 1.05 million. This huge human tragedy results from the fact that the Western elite wanted to see Ukrainians killed like sacrificial lambs ‘to the last Ukrainian’, in Biden’s proxy war, begun in 2014, to topple the Russian government. However, there are also the consequences of this war for Western Europe and its Russophobic ruling class. Its pre-Trumpian, US-appointed elite hates Russia so much that it has bankrupted its own peoples.

For well over four decades Western Europe survived and even prospered on cheap manufactures (consumer goods of all sorts) from China and energy and raw materials (oil, gas, metals, diamonds, minerals and fertilisers) from Russia. However, in the last three years Western European elite has suicidally cut itself off from Russian products, allowing the US to blow up the Nordstream pipeline and Kiev to shut off its Russian gas. It is true that Western Europe (especially Germany) is hypocritically importing ever greater amounts of Russian LNG, Russian gas via Turkiye and Russian oil via India. But it is all more expensive than before. And so Western Europe is collapsing economically, deindustrialising, and its infrastructure is failing – while China’s is advancing.

The Collapse of Western Europe and the Future

The result is the same in all European countries, from Hungary to Croatia, from Slovakia to Italy, from Romania to France, from Austria to Spain, from Germany to the UK. The Globalist elite, whether in Brussels, Paris, Berlin, London or anywhere else in Western Europe, is being challenged by strong national Sovereigntist parties and small but serious left-wing parties. Moreover, the Sovereigntists are supported from the new anti-Globalist Washington, where Trump is now busy draining Biden’s swamp. Though the Sovereigntists are always called ‘far right’ by the Globalists, who are actually so woke and intolerant that they are Fascists, the Sovereigntists are not that, indeed they have much in common with the small left-wing parties.

The close parallels between the Big Three, Germany, France, UK) in Europe are striking. The detested French Macron, the hopeless German Scholz and ever-changing British nonentities, such as May, Truss, Sunak, Starmer, are all the same. In France, Macron lost the elections last year, but clings on to power like a dictator, even though he was rejected by the people. Now the would-be future German Chancellor, Merz (like Scholz) and Starmer (like May, Truss, Sunak etc), is so utterly charmless as to be defined as anti-charismatic. The Trump government, whose spokesman is Musk, appears to intend to regime-change Germany and the UK, its two closest satellites in Europe, and both of which the USA occupies. Hence his talks with the AfD and Reform.

Regime-Change in Germany and the UK

In both these countries, this would actually be popular. Here the fact that the UK is not formally in the EU is irrelevant, since the end-of-EU Brexit was never implemented by the EU-bribed British Establishment, which knew that Brexit could be the first step to the end of the EU and their income. In Germany there is the small left-wing Wagenknecht Socialist Party and in the UK the small left-wing Galloway Workers’ Party. However, both countries have big Sovereigntist Parties. In Germany there is the AfD (very popular in former East Germany) and in the UK, the Reform Party. Both are now at about 25%-30% of the vote in the polls. The German AfD Party has a lucid and highly-educated leader, Weidel, and the UK Reform Party has some strong personalities.

Reform already has nearly 200,000 members, overtaking the dying Conservative Party at 130,000 members, and is catching up with the rapidly shrinking Labour Party. Should such parties reach 35% in the polls, they may well form the next governments. After all, the Labour government was elected by only 20% of the electorate. However, leadership without authority is in fact no leadership at all, just as hope without prayer is no hope at all. In Germany, the AfD, threatened with real censorship and even legal banning by the Fascists in power, continues to grow, challenging especially in the East the bourgeois CDU and CSU Parties of former West Germany. The fact is that those who lived under Communism, as in East Germany, are socially conservative, not woke.

The Church Leadership

This political situation has parallels in the Church. There are Local Churches which have solid and even remarkable leadership, such as the Romanian (Patriarch Daniel), the Serbian (Patriarch Porfiry), and now the Bulgarian (Patriarch Daniel). Archbishop Anastasios of Albania, eternal memory!, and his Synod also played a remarkable and honest role. The Polish Church too, and the American, whose Metr Tikhon alone had the courage to visit the much-persecuted Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The Churches of Antioch under the Athonite Patriarch John and of Jerusalem, and the elderly and saintly leader of the Georgian Church have also played a role of leadership, not to mention individual bishops in Greece and Cyprus.

On the other hand, there are those who have played with the canons for political self-justification. They have uncanonically abused the canons for purely political and nationalistic reasons, acting at times with personal hatred and jealousy, accepting bribes and invading each other’s canonical territory, trying to wind back history by hundreds of years. This is all mere self-justification. All they have done through their scandalous actions is to compromise the unity of the Church and to discredit themselves and their Local Churches before the people as well as before the secular world. This has been a case of leaders without authority. As a result, in those places authority has passed to the people and their shepherds, the pastors, priests, monks and nuns.

Conclusion: Humility

The choice, in other words, is Centralisation or Decentralisation. However, the latter means giving up a large amount of power and wealth. This is called humility. Some might think that Church leaders would find this easy to do. Are they not Christians? Sadly, just as among the world’s political leaders, that is not the case. And yet if Church leaders want authority, they must have humility. We only have to think of the saintly Patriarch Ilia of Georgia, Patriarch Porfiry of Serbia, who solved the Macedonian schism in an instant, and many other holy hierarchs, both living and departed – like Patriarch Pavle of Serbia, who always used public transport, refusing to have a car, as many of his priests do not have cars. Here is the solution, old and yet eternally new: Humility.

 

 

 

 

Standing up to the Bullies: The Chickens Come Home to Roost

Foreword: Retribution and Faith

There is such a thing as retribution, also called requite or recompense. Retribution is popularly known as ‘getting your just desserts’, ‘karma’, ‘payback’, or ‘the boomerang effect’, but the words of the Saviour express it as According to your faith be it unto you (Matthew 9, 29). This means that, if we have no faith, we will suffer, but if we do have faith, we will suffer only as much as we need and we can bear, for God is with us. This is the meaning of the saying: ‘We are Orthodox, God is with us’. His grace protects us, for we are with Him.

That God is with us depends on Faith. However, if we do not have Faith and it is replaced by a mere ideology, regardless of whether it is liberal or conservative, not only do we lose Divine protection, we also become stupid. This is because ideologies are not based on reality, but on intolerant ideals imposed by trying to make reality fit them. When reality refuses to fit, the ideologies collapse. This is what happened to Fascism and Communism. Today, this is true of Globalism, the one-size-fits-all incredibly intolerant Western ‘liberal’ woke ideology.

A Bully

As everyone has long known, the new (and old) US President is a bully. However, it is possible to stand up to him. Russia and China do. In fact, anybody can stand up to a bully, it is a question of will-power and allies. However, the new US President is also an Anti-Globalist, he believes in local spheres of influence. His sphere is Northern America, which is why he will take over Greenland and then maybe Canada, perhaps working from the east, British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan etc to Ontario and Quebec in the west, as the most resistant.

He may even want to take over Latin America, though that is very uncertain, since those countries have become much more independent in recent decades, refusing their old role as vassal banana republics. In the wider world, he may want to take over the rest of the Anglosphere – Australia, New Zealand and the mother countries, England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. The latter could agree, given the bankruptcy of the EU and British Establishments. But for all of them there is still the very strong alternative of BRICS, of China and Eurasian Russia.

The Technique of the Bully

When American authorities overthrow legitimate governments and then occupy their countries, from Iraq to the Ukraine, they first boss the local people around, insisting that everyone speaks American, instead of their native English, or whatever the local language may be. Next, they ship out the gold reserves. Thus, straight after the coup in Kiev in 2014, the US conquistadores took out the $15 billon of gold reserves from Borispol. Those who come here do the same, they want the gold, any treasure and property they can get their hands on.

In other words, they attempt to asset-strip, intimidating, humiliating, picking on the slightest weakness, as all bullies do, and then expelling the legal owners and taking over their church property. ‘Give me the keys’, they scream down the telephone. Then, when nobody goes there any more, because the legal owners, clergy, choir and people, have been ‘defrocked’ and expelled by them, they plan to sell the by then empty church property to buy themselves a bishop’s palace, from where they can continue to practise their guru’s papal infallibility.

Resistance to the Bully

Our unwavering adherence to the practices and canons of the Church has been criticised by the same ‘crazy convert’ fringe. They express personal hatred, personal jealousy and bullying persecution, trying to close the churches of the faithful people, bought and set up with their own money. They even defrock the clergy of other Local Churches because ‘their paperwork is not in order’, while themselves taking in misled clergy from other Local Churches without letters of leave! However, the truth is now out the world over. All can see it.

Having canonically and clearly belonged to the Patriarchate of Romania for three years, that is, to the mainstream of the Church, we are able to concelebrate with all Orthodox. There are no schisms here. This freedom is the fruit of standing up to bullies, having principles, defending the integrity of Church life – all recognise us as canonical. However, those who created schism and are out of communion with others, the schismatics whom we left, are ever more isolated, stewing in their own juice, with nobody listening to them. They are talking to themselves.

Real Clergy Unite

The fate of all whistleblowers is to be persecuted at first, but later they are justified and they say: ‘Told you so’. For those who slandered and punished the whistleblowers have painted themselves into their own self-created corners, where they are ignored by all, if they are at all noticed. The most distinguishing feature of the punishers is their imagined infallibility and power – they never apologise, but instead they only justify their lack of Christian faith and way of life. This is proved by their inability to repent for the evil they have committed.

The duty of all non-careerist, that is, real, bishops and priests is to pray, celebrating the services and distributing the sacraments. In this way they gather the people together, they unite, for dioceses and parishes are communities and families. However, there are those who want to divide families, setting son against father, daughter against mother, one nationality against another, one jurisdiction against another. The dividers are unpopular, well known for not telling the truth, persecuting and closing churches. Such isolate themselves.

Afterword: The Cleansing Has Begun

Meanwhile, those who do their jobs of gathering together are respected and are invited to concelebrate everywhere. For they are in unity and communion and communion is the sign of belonging to the Church. This communion enrages even more the dividers, schismatics and persecutors, for they are ever more isolated and all see that they are out of communion with others, confined to their tiny sects and ghettoes. And the more they rage, the more they are ignored and even mocked. They have created a vicious circle for themselves.

The Great Cleansing of the Church is coming. Yes, the Church has been infiltrated, as it always has been. In the time of Christ, the Twelve were infiltrated by a traitor, Judas. It is no different today. They shout that Russia must leave the Russian Ukraine to its Fascist fate of genocide, fully agreeing with their US masters. It is normal – they have the same masters as the Ukrainian puppets, they are brothers. It is sad to see that the Church too has been infiltrated by them. But the Church too will be cleansed of them. There is no doubt about it.