The war of the West against Russia in the Ukraine, which began in 2014, and the resulting schism among the Orthodox Churches, caused by Patriarch Bartholomew’s uncanonical actions in the Ukraine, which the US paid him $20 million for, has led to the isolation of the Russian Church. Although the over-reaction of the Russian Church may partly be to blame for that isolation, Patriarch Bartholomew has tried to increase it and told Orthodox and Non-Orthodox alike that the Russian Church is schismatic. Only he therefore, he claims, can represent the 16 Orthodox Churches.

On top of this, since 2017 the Russian Church has been unable to hold a Bishops’ Council, first because of covid, then because of that NATO war against Russia. As a result, the governance of the Russian Church has come to resemble that of the Vatican, the Pope and his Cardinals replaced by the Patriarch and his Synod. Countries like the Ukraine and Latvia have not been represented and crises are ongoing almost everywhere among Russian Orthodox in countries outside Russia.

For example, on 22 October 2026 the Moscow Synod met as usual and made a number of controversial decisions regarding certain bishops: Bishop Kirill (Zinkovsky) of Sergiev-Posad and Dmitrov, Bishop Feodosiy (Gazhu) in Omsk, Archbishop Varnava (Safonov) in Pavlodar, Bishop Gedeon (Gubka) in Nizhny Novgorod, Bishop Simon (Morozov) in the Don, Bishop Aleksei (Mulyar) in Irkutsk, and Metropolitan Konstantin (Goryanov) of Petrozavodsk and Karelia. 

Sadly, at every quarterly meeting of the Synod, certain, usually young, bishops are removed – not defrocked. But the damage has already been done. In the age of the internet –  we no longer live in the USSR – the people know all about the moral or financial failings of those who have had to be removed and have discredited the Church in the eyes of the faithful and of Russian society at large. The actions of the Synodal meetings come months, sometimes years, after the whole of society knows all the gory details and is therefore scandalised why action was not taken long before.

As a result, some will say that the whole system is a hypocritically corrupt mafia, with all covering each other’s back. Unjust? Perhaps. But the refusal to take action for years on end and to brush everything under the carpet until crisis point has been reached and action has to be taken means that the authorities of the Russian Church make themselves prone to charges of hypocrisy. And so all are stained because of the few.

At the same time some older and even distinguished and popular bishops, appointed by the much-respected late Patriarch Aleksiy II, are often retired at such Synodal meetings. The priests and people are never consulted about any of this and, all too often, walk away from Church life in disgust. And yet the Church is supposed to be Conciliar, not Papist… This is anti-missionary. Now the Synodal meeting of 22 October has decided that all new deacons and priests will have to take a solemn oath not to say anything on the internet or on social media which ‘discredits the Orthodox Church’.

This is so vague as to be dangerous. What does it mean? Censorship? What if a priest is being persecuted by a bishop who is a schismatic, a heretic, a freemason, a fornicator, a homosexual, a pedophile, or simply an open thief who persecutes his clergy? Must that priest submit, hush everything up and perhaps participate in the evil deeds, in exchange for a pay-off, a part in the spoil, or a mitre or some other tinsel, as we have so often seen?

To do that would precisely mean discrediting the Church and presenting it as a corrupt mafia to the world. Again, this is anti-missionary….All this does is to alienate the people from the Church. creating the impression that the Church is only for a self-serving clerical caste of self-governing bandits and oligarchs, who cover up for each other and act with impunity, rather as in the Vatican. Precisely, alas!, as Russian people who live here tell me about the Russian Church….

It seems that it never rains, but it pours in Moscow. Not only are there the scandals inside Russia, as well as in the Ukraine, the Baltics, Moldova, now there is the ROCOR scandal, which had been brushed under the carpet again and again since 2021. It has resurfaced again. It is time to see action from the Russian Church. When it has sorted out the disorder, not to say, chaos, in its own house, only then will it have a word to say to the rest of the world. Until then, it seems, there can only be nostalgia for a glorious past…