Category Archives: Autobiography

Come, Holy Spirit! Over 5,000 Words on over Fifty Years of Faithfulness to the Orthodox Church

Fifty Years of History; 2022: Departure of the Majority to the Romanian Orthodox Metropolia; The Ukraine; The Suicide of ROCOR; Eastern Papism; A New Local Church

Fifty Years of History

Q: Why is 2025 a significant year for you personally?

A: 2025 marks fifty years of faithfulness to the Orthodox Church and Faith, forty-seven of them in the Russian Church, three in the Romanian Church, and forty years as an Orthodox clergyman.

Q: When did you begin this journey?

A: My conscious journey began in 1968, when I was twelve years old. I realised then that my destiny was in the Orthodox Church and set about studying Russian, though there had been contacts with two local White Russian families before that. However, as I was under age, I was not able to join the Church until I was eighteen. Six years of waiting. In 1973 I at last managed to visit an Orthodox church. This was the Russian émigré chapel inside the house on the corner of Canterbury Road in Oxford. Soon after, the chapel became a library with the late Rev Derwas Chitty’s books and magazines, as the new octagonal University chapel, now Greek, had been opened in the garden outside.

Q: Why did you join the Russian Church?

A: Hobson’s choice, as they say in Cambridge! The only other Local Churches present in this country then, the Greek and the Serbian, would just tell you to go away. ‘You are not one of us’. They were ethnic clubs. Therefore, you had no choice. Only the two Russian jurisdictions would accept you. Not that they were very gracious about it either. They gave you the impression that they would accept you, but they would have preferred not to. Only because the elderly Russian emigres had no political power or money and were dying out, did some of them accept you. Many told us they would sooner die out than accept ‘foreigners’. They also entertained bitter political divisions and polemics, which you just had to put up with and make sense of.

2022: Departure of the Majority to the Romanian Orthodox Metropolia

Q: In 2022 three-quarters of the ROCOR Diocese in England, the so-called ‘Colchester Diocese’, though it stretches to Coventry and Manchester, that is, many ROCOR parishes, 5,000 people and 15 clergy, including three Western rite clergy, left ROCOR and 12 of you (all except for the Western riters) joined the Romanian Church. So do you regret that you had worked for forty-seven years for the unity of the divided three parts of the Russian Church?

A: No, not at all! To work for unity is always good. Without unity Churches fall out of communion and eventually become sects. This is my real experience, I have seen this and lived this. This is what began to happen to the two Russian émigré Churches, the smaller one based in Paris and the larger one based in New York, after the last emigres who had been adults and known the realities of Russia before 1917 had died out and direct contact with reality was lost.

After them, by the early 2000s, the sectarian fantasies, to the left and to the right, in both of them became ever stronger. The Paris group began falling away definitively towards liberal secularism under masonic sponsorship and the New York group began falling away definitively into old calendarist sectarianism under CIA sponsorship, like that of the elderly CIA Colonel Magerovsky. We were eyewitnesses to both and knew all the personalities involved, writing vigorously against both extremist tendencies. There was only one way out for them, to rejoin the broad Centre, which could hold everyone together.

Indeed, we finally got both parts into communion with the Centre in Moscow and so with each other, just in time, with many of the extremists falling away, 47% of the Paris group and 5% of the New York group. However, ironically, our triumph lasted only a little more than one year, for they fell out of communion with each other again. The fault here was entirely that of the very aggressive, old calendarist pharisee-bishops of New York, who had remained in ROCOR or infiltrated it after unity and were wreaking havoc. This took place after set in the dementia of the ever-memorable Metr Hilarion, who had no idea what they were doing in his name. The schism came in December 2020. Only one bishop resisted, the anti-sectarian and anti-rebaptiser Archbishop Peter of Chicago, who had been an altar boy to St John, but who has since died. His see is now without a permanent bishop and many there are now out of control.

Q: Why did the Centre in Moscow not try and hold the two émigré parts together?

A: As the Russians say of themselves, ‘We are slow to harness, but quick to ride’. In other words, Moscow is very passive, it does nothing for, say, twenty years despite all the warnings of the coming explosion from the grassroots, and then, too late, after the explosion, it overreacts to the extreme. This is the result of not working incrementally and being pastorally interested, only politically interested. Firstly, Moscow had, and refused to have, little or any understanding of the provincial Russian emigration and its petty political arguments. Secondly, Moscow was distracted from pastoral care by international politics, for by that time Moscow had itself fallen out of communion with the Greeks, after the grossly uncanonical actions of the Greeks in the Ukraine, breaking the first canons of the Apostles. Again, here too, Moscow overreacted.

Here we see how the fall from communion with the Greeks by the Centre affected the rest. Lack of communion is like an infection, a virus. So all our work for unity was undone by the Moscow error of overreaction to the Greek error, splitting off from the Church. Then, not having turned the other cheek, Moscow ‘did a Constantinople’, by interfering in the jurisdiction of Alexandria in Africa. Little wonder that people then began to say that ‘Moscow is as bad as Constantinople’.

Q: What do you do, if even the Centre is infected by the spirit of disunity and without principles tolerates sectarianism, and ignores schism and even the heresy of rebaptising Orthodox?

A: In such a case, you must transfer to a canonical Local Church which is not infected with the disease of schism and has a Diaspora structure. Today, that means neither the Russians, nor the Greeks. As I had been to seminary in the 1970s and a couple of the seminarians had become bishops, namely in the Serbian and Romanian Churches, and since I had been around for a long time and had met lots of other bishops since then and many had read the translations of my writings into Bulgarian, Serbian, Romanian, German and Czech, we had a choice of where to go. After the Russian betrayal of us in the Non-schismatic Diaspora, all the others offered to protect us from the new, brutal, sectarian, uncanonical and anti-pastoral ROCOR. The pen is indeed mightier than the sword.

The Ukraine

Q: What was the connection between your departure for the Romanian Patriarchate and the conflict in the Ukraine?

A: None, directly. We were received by our old friend, the very experienced Metr Joseph (Pop) of the four-million strong Autonomous Metropolia of Western and Southern Europe of the Romanian Orthodox Church on 16 February 2022, as proved by the documents issued on that day (despite the blatant lies of others on the internet who said that those documents were forged (!), much to the shock of Metr Joseph – he did not know that bishops can lie). Now that was eight days before the new phase of the Ukrainian conflict began on 24 February.

It was providential that we had left before that conflict, because then we did not have to face the deep and bitter divisions among the flock which the commemoration of Patriarch Kyrill has brought to all Russian parishes, especially in ROCOR, though it happens even inside Russia. There anti-war Orthodox are also boycotting the Church in very large numbers, not least after the ‘defrocking’ and exiling of liberal but popular priests like Fr Alexei Uminsky.

The reason why we left was the schism which occurred with the official introduction of the heresy of rebaptism of Orthodox under old calendarist pressure, not the problem of the Ukraine. Our departure was clearly not directly connected with the intensified conflict in the Ukraine eight days later, on 24 February, but there was still an indirect connection. This is because both the heresy of rebaptism and the scandalous support for a war against other Orthodox were caused by exactly the same lack of pastoral leadership. The chasm between the bishops on the one hand and the suffering priests and people on the other hand, whom the bishops have been persecuting, opened up for exactly the same reason.

Q: But you seem to support the Russian side in the conflict in the Ukraine?

A: Not at all, that is not true. No clergyman can support war and violence. However, as a political observer and cultural historian, who knows very well both Russia and the Ukraine, both officially and unofficially, and has met both recent Patriarchs and President Putin, and who also perfectly well knows the aggression and hypocrisy of the West, several things were obvious.

Firstly, it was obvious from the very outset that, as a Great Power, Russia would win that deeply tragic and catastrophic conflict. That is not support, it is just a recognition of an obvious fact. It was also clear that the Kiev regime was Fascist and atheist and was acting simply as a proxy of the highly aggressive USA and the EU. It was obvious that the anti-Ukrainian regime in Kiev existed only because NATO was using it to try and destroy Russia and grab its wealth, for the Ukraine is the last chance of the West to dominate the world and pay off its colossal debts. It was also plain for all to see that the Kiev regime had been persecuting the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and all the minorities there (and the Russians in the Ukraine are a minority of 40%!) for years. Blood is on their hands – the Russians did not start this.

Moreover, the CIA and Constantinople support for the fake Church, the OCU, under Dumenko, is an abuse of the canons, on the same level as the abuse of the canons by others, as is the present ‘defrocking’ of bishops of Cyprus for their faithfulness to Christ in refusing to recognise the fake Church. The latter has totally discredited the Church of Cyprus, which kowtows to discredited Constantinople and the local US ambassador. Frankly, there is something quite satanic in the Kiev regime, as it closes hundreds of churches, threatens to turn them into casinos and propagandises LGBT.

It was also obvious that the Ukrainian people, especially the real Orthodox there, were the victims of that war. And finally, it was manifest that the ignorant and arrogant Western mainstream media, financed by the CIA and MI6, which are themselves financed by the Military Financial Complex of the USA and the UK, supported the Kiev Nazis because they could make a lot of money out of such a conflict. They told plain lies. It was the same in Britain in the First World War, where the newspapers which were owned by millionaire arms merchants told the same type of lies.

The Suicide of ROCOR

Q: How did ROCOR come to discredit and destroy itself?

A: All too many in the Russian episcopate now appear to want to suck money out of the parishes in order to finance their ‘superior’, oligarchic lifestyle and then in return sadistically punish the selfsame priests and parishes for telling the truth and living as Christians, also trying to destroy their families. Such bishops, whether inside or outside Russia, claim that they are acting according to the canons and that any who refuse to accept their vicious persecutions and slanders are committing the ultimate sin of refusing to participate in their evil. That apparently is ‘uncanonical’!

Clearly, these people are not Christians. It would be laughable if it were not so sad. We are obedient to Christ, not to those who are de facto filioquists, that is, who claim to have replaced Christ and so put their clearly twisted interpretations of the canons above the Holy Spirit. Their lust for power and money is what has temporarily corrupted the Russian Church, just as it has Constantinople. The Russian émigré Churches had never suffered from that disease, as they had neither power, nor money, which was precisely their glory, but they had died out by the early 2000s. We saw their last generation between 1975 and 2000.

The local example of a recent convert was of one who suffered from narcissistic rages and tantrums, throwing his toys out of his pram and acting as a typical unprincipled bully. Uneducated and ignorant, humiliating those who had been in the Church before he was even born, he threatened all with a metaphorical baseball bat. He was a kind of ecclesiastical Trump, wanting only to ‘grab property’ (the words of our outraged solicitor who examined his shameless claims in astonishment – she had never seen anything like it, even in the secular world) and dominate, without any understanding of local languages, history, geography, customs etc. Moscow now knows all about him, since the scandal he caused in the altar of a church in Paris last year, when he had to be restrained by another bishop from his aggressive rage and threat of violence.

Q: Was ROCOR’s entry into schism and even heresy inevitable?

A: No, not at all. As far back as 1997, a friend of mine, the late Fr Roman Lukianov in Boston USA, warned that ROCOR risked becoming a sect, as the ever-memorable Archbishop Antony of Geneva, successor of St John, had reposed in 1993. For decades Vladyka Antony had been the great moderating influence inside ROCOR against the American crazies. He was rightly concerned, as were others of us.

I remember one old aristocratic émigré in London, who had worked for MI6 (so many of them did) in Iran in the 1950s (himself he just said that he had worked for ‘The Foreign Office’, which was well-understood code). He said that no unity between ROCOR and the MP was possible because ROCOR was like a glass of pure water and the MP was like a glass of dirty water. I asked him then why St Matrona of Moscow and St Luke of the Crimea had been in the MP? Then I asked him why were there so many scandals in ROCOR, with the Grabbe affair, his ‘six million dollar’ son, and the defrocking for good canonical reasons of immoral priests and why there were so many ROCOR parishes that did not have priests? He simply answered that he had never heard of any of that! In other words, it was all ignorance and bigotry. It was the usual phariseeism of those who see the speck in others, but not the log in their own eye.

In fact, despite such people, ROCOR did not become a sect and ten years later it even entered back into communion with Moscow, then presided over by a former émigré, the ever-memorable Patriarch Alexis II. That was a miracle. I witnessed it. ROCOR through the ever-memorable Metr Laurus had received the most generous canonical agreement from the Patriarch, becoming a self-governing part of the Russian Church. ROCOR had basically become an Autonomous Church of the Diaspora. This had been exactly our hope all along. My only regret was that it had taken so long. Patriarch Alexis, whom I knew, had already made the same offer in about 1995! Seven years had been wasted after the revolutionary 2000 Jubilee Council in Moscow when all our just demands had been met.

With such an agreement to autonomy, ROCOR could therefore have avoided all the controversy of the later Russian schism with the Greeks and the conflict in the Ukraine and not broken communion with but co-operated with the other Local Churches. (By other Local Churches, I do not include the leadership of the Greek Churches, whose policies were purely political, dictated to them and paid for by the CIA).

But instead of using its autonomy and working with the concert of the politically free Local Churches, self-governing ROCOR showed no independence from Moscow at all, except to express CIA views of the Kiev regime! It not only entered into schism from the Greeks, but also took several priests from the Greek Church without letters of release, and accepted in silence the persecution of priests like Fr Alexei Uminsky. All this was because it did not want to recognise the Catholicity of the Church, but to be a schismatic ghetto-group, actually denying the sacraments of other local Churches, against its own people.

Q: But you must admit that ROCOR had long been a breeding ground for schism?

A: Yes, there had been the Bostonite old calendarist schism in, I think, 1986, when about 2,000 left, the tiny old calendarist schisms in France in 1987 and 2001, then the four schisms in the USA and England of 2007. But each time the numbers who left for all these various warring ‘True Orthodox’ sects were minute, often fewer than 500, sometimes as few as 50. The ROCOR Centre had remained firm.

And all those schisms proved just how necessary it was for ROCOR to enter into canonical communion with Moscow and to eliminate the sectarian spirit of hatred and division for ever. Those schisms also proved how ROCOR had for years been attracting the wrong sort of people, pathological extremists and the dissatisfied, sometimes second-generation immigrant Russians with their inferiority complexes and fantasies about pre-Revolutionary Russia, sometimes weird converts from Protestant sects, very often with sexual problems.

These are the sort of people who call normal Orthodox ‘World Orthodox’ and themselves, in their narcissistic and pharisaical pride, ‘True Orthodox’. There is no such thing as ‘World Orthodox’. True, there can be worldly or lapsed Orthodox, but they do not go to church and therefore, they are not Orthodox. An Orthodox is one who goes to church, unlike so many of the internet Orthodox who dare to call themselves ‘True Orthodox’. The only ‘True Orthodox’ are the saints of God, to whose state all Orthodox aspire.

Today, there are all of us who left ROCOR from 2021 on, in the USA, in England and elsewhere. Only this time we left not for weird and schismatic sectarian groups, but for the mainstream Local Churches, anti-Bartholomew Constantinople (those who joined Constantinople in the USA and Paris refuse to have anything to do with his fake Ukrainian Church) and then Bucharest, which welcomed us all with open arms and great sympathy, as heroic witnesses and refugees from ROCOR schism and heresy.

This time it was the scandal-ridden ROCOR itself which had become a weird and schismatic sectarian group. True, there were others in ROCOR who were too weak and fearful, including one bishop and several clergy, who did not leave for other Local Churches, but simply gave up and resigned in disgust at the lack of canonicity and corruption they had seen inside the new ROCOR. This is the end of ROCOR, its suicide. It has outlived its sell-by date.

Q: But what do you think about the anti-Moscow Patriarchate ROCOR Synod statement of 5 June?

https://www.synod.com/synod/eng2025/20250605_ensynodstatement.html

A: This was a clearly provoked by the very recent Sister Vassa debacle and the numbers of Russians leaving ROCOR in the USA and withdrawing their donations, since the documents contains nothing new and could have been written years ago. (Why wasn’t it written then? Well, as American say, ‘Follow the money’). It was clearly written by the German Metr Mark and his entourage, who have been running the Synod ever since they removed Metr Vitaly in 2001.

It is a document that deals only with the past of 70-90 years ago and fails utterly to address the present, the elephant in the room, the war in the Ukraine. The liberals will rightly mock the document as too little, too late. However, there is even worse.

From the Moscow viewpoint, the ROCOR document is scandalous. It is well known that the German Diocese of Metr Mark still has many children and grandchildren of Vlasovites (Russians who fought with Hitler) in it. For Russians in Russia Stalin was the victor of 1945, just as for British people Churchill (who was just as racist as Hitler) was the victor in 1945. And Vlasov was a traitor. Any attack of this manner on Stalin is seen as Nazi and therefore as support for the Nazis in Kiev, who are have been killing Russian civilians and children ever since 2014, with the support of the grandchildren of Nazis in Berlin and Brussels.

This statement has quite rightly outraged Moscow, especially since it has Vlasovite and CIA connections. It was 27 million Soviet citizens who were massacred by the Nazis between 1941 and 1945. Victory came when Stalin was the Soviet leader. Why is ROCOR, with its close Vlasov and CIA connections meddling in internal affairs in Russia? If Moscow ditches ROCOR, then it will lose its last shreds of a claim to canonicity and become officially the schismatic sect that it already is. For the quite correct Russian reaction, see:

https://ruskline.ru/news_rl/2025/06/06/sinod_rpcz_nastupaet_na_te_zhe_grabli

Q: Today ROCOR is attracting many young men. So ROCOR is not finished?

A: All Orthodox dioceses in the Diaspora are receiving many young people today. This is due to the internet effect of various influencers. But we have to be very careful and receive only the serious, not the beardy-weirdy. With such people the lapse rate is extremely high. I am now receiving at least one young person a month, though as many young women as men, including refugees from ROCOR sectarianism, now that they have understood their mistake. ROCOR is once more attracting the wrong sort of young men, the terminally online, the exclusivists, incels, woman-haters, closet homosexuals, bisexuals, extremists, narcissists, internet Orthodox. You cannot build a Church on their exclusivist pathology and hatred, and yet ROCOR usually ordains such young men, preferring them to the normal!

Thus, they claim that Orthodoxy is ’manly’ and ‘masculine’. But what about women? Are they not allowed? Why are they against family life and children? Clearly, all this is internet fantasy. Russian churches especially have always been filled with women, 80% or 90%. But you will not learn about that reality from the internet. Those remaining in ROCOR just never learn. They are just making it worse for themselves. All we can do is to pray for their repentance despite their schism and heresy.

Eastern Papism

Q: Why did some Russian hierarchs fall into exactly the same error as the Greek (Constantinople) Church before it, by proclaiming themselves to be some sort of Eastern Papacy?

A: Only about 2% of Orthodox belong to the Greek jurisdiction of Constantinople, whereas 70% (140 million) belong to that of Moscow. Moscow therefore thinks that it is No 1. However, Constantinople maintains that as the Church of the former Imperial Capital (which fell nearly 600 years ago!), it is the ‘first without equals’, that is, No 1.

Now promoting yourself as ‘No 1’ is precisely the heresy of Papism, which directly contradicts the Gospel, where Christ calls on us to serve others, not to lord it over others. The First Rome fell because it wanted to dominate. Those who call themselves the Second Rome and the Third Rome have learned nothing from its fall and have instead chosen to imitate that exact same ‘Roman’ fall. It is the sin of Rome-ism, even though you may call it worldliness, secularism, erastianism or Sergianism.

Fortunately, the Church works through Catholicity, not through becoming a State (the First Rome), ancient prestige (the Second Rome) or through size (the Third Rome). A Council of the whole Church, all sixteen Local Churches, is the solution to this childish division. In any case, as a result, both Moscow and Constantinople have punished themselves. Today Moscow is being reduced in size, losing a third of its territories and parishes, and as for Constantinople, it is losing the last shreds of its prestige, making itself into a laughing-stock, as one bishop after another in the Church of Cyprus is ‘defrocked’ for the ‘heresy’ of disagreeing with Constantinople!

Both Moscow and Constantinople are punished by the sin that they sinned with, as the Book of Proverbs says. God is not mocked. Meanwhile the real Church, the other fourteen Local Churches, goes on together with the many healthy elements within both Moscow and Constantinople are in accord. This is not a sickness unto death, for repentance is possible.

A New Local Church

Q: What after fifty years of struggle do you think of the chances of a new Local Church being established?

A: I have always believed that I would not live to see it, but I have always fought for it, for the sake of our children and grandchildren. It is still for the future and despite the present Greek and Russian squabble we are far closer to it than fifty years ago, when it was an impossible dream and even services in local languages hardly existed. The present schism does not fill me with pessimism because people in their eighties die. What is frightening is that people of that age appear to feel no repentance.

The point is that over the last fifty years I have seen both the Russian Church in the Diaspora and the Greek (Constantinople) Church dying out. Why? Because they stuck to what for the new Western-born generations of Russians and Greeks were foreign languages, Slavonic and Greek. They do not understand a word of them. The decision not to use local languages was suicide, the ethnic funeral of the Church.

On top of that, what possible missionary witness do you give to Non-Orthodox, if you do not even speak the local language and understand the local culture? Did the Apostles go around speaking in a foreign language to preach the Gospel? No, they spoke in the local language. This is one of the meanings of Pentecost. To speak in tongues does not mean to speak in gibberish in a wave of hysterical self-exaltation, like crazy Evangelicals and Pentecostalists. It means to work in order to learn another language, its culture and customs, in order to inculturate the Orthodox Christian Faith and so bring people to Christ.

St Nicholas of Japan, St Tikhon of Moscow and St John of Shanghai are recent examples, for they did exactly this. They did not impose, they set examples. All we have to do is follow them. For instance, when Japan started its proxy war against Russia with its undeclared surprise attack on Russia, St Nicholas told his Japanese clergy to pray for their armed forces and locked himself away to pray for the duration. Here is our example.

Q: And what about the chances of achieving an Autocephalous Local Church today?

A: Firstly, most Local Churches do not even have a Diaspora jurisdiction, so they are not concerned by the question.

Secondly, many of the Churches that do have a Diaspora jurisdiction would never give autocephaly to their Diaspora jurisdiction for ethnic reasons, especially if that jurisdiction is small. So there is no hope that in Western Europe, for example, the Serbian, Bulgarian, Georgian or Antiochian Churches will ever grant autocephaly. This means that only the big three, the Greek, Russian or Romanian Churches could ever give autocephaly in Western Europe. True, the Romanian Church gave autonomy several years ago, but not autocephaly for very good canonical reasons, for which see below.

Thirdly, there is the question of local people who have joined that Church. This is all about missionary work. Ghetto-churches will never give autocephaly. Why should they? They are precisely not local and do not want to be local! But if there were large numbers of local people in a Church, then it would have to receive autocephaly. This so far is not the case anywhere, the numbers of native people accepting Orthodoxy have been very small.

Fourthly, there is the question of size. For example, the Greek Church is by far the largest in North America and Australia, the Antiochian the largest in South America, whereas the Romanian Church has in the last 15 years become by far the largest in Western Europe. In those regions, we must hope that the largest group would take responsibility and draw towards autocephaly. However, more of this in the final point below.

Finally, there is the issue of ability to get on with others, i.e, the absence of nationalism and narrow jurisdictionalism and even worse, of sectarianism. This disqualifies the Greek and now the Russian Churches, one of whose bishops told our Romanians and Moldovans that, ‘I don’t like Romanians and I only half-like Moldovans’. This is racism, chauvinism on the same level as Constantinople’s.

The fact is that the Greek Church of Constantinople has never voluntarily given or recognised genuine autocephaly to anyone because of its centralising tendencies, neither to the Serbs, nor to the Russians, nor to the Romanians and, most obviously, nor to the Bulgarians, nor to the Poles, nor to the Czechs and Slovaks, nor to the Macedonians today. Even the ‘autocephaly’ the Greeks recently gave to the Ukrainian schismatics is completely fake. Their fake Church of gangsters and thugs has no independence and depends entirely on CIA cash. Even in history, when the Copts and the Armenians broke away from Orthodoxy, the main reason was their nationalist reaction to Greek racism.

With the suicide of ROCOR and its schism from the Paris Archdiocese of the Russian Church, in Western Europe the Russians have now done exactly the same thing as the Greeks, excluding most Ukrainians, Moldovans and normal local Western Europeans from the Russian Church, that is, becoming like the Greeks a nationalistic ghetto-Church. There is only one option left – the Romanians.

Are the Romanians up to the job? I can affirm that many are, the publishing efforts in English and French of the Romanian Dioceses are formidable. But is that enough? Only time will tell. What is certain that no one Local Church can give autocephaly. It must be done in concert, which is why Bucharest did not give us autocephaly, only autonomy. Thus, there is no room either for nationalism, nor sectarianism.

Q: What might a new Local Church look like?

A: I see it as a group of bishops, with their flocks of different nationalities, presiding in turn for a fixed term over the new Local Church, its autocephaly granted collectively by all the Local Churches concerned. Each bishop would have his own diocese, Serbian, Bulgarian, Greek, Georgian, Romanian, Russian and Antiochian. We must avoid the error of the Greeks who set up episcopal assemblies. These failed and no longer operate because the Greeks wanted to dominate them and sat in permanent control over them, heavy-handedly trying to impose their views. That is not the way to go. There must be complete respect and freedom for different languages, calendars and customs, not to mention different attitudes towards ecumenism. There must be no interference from the Mother-Churches. Autocephaly must mean autocephaly. There is no other way.

Mitred Archpriest Andrew Phillips,

Pentecost 2025

Hopes for the Future of the Orthodox World: A Personal View

Foreword

I sometimes feel as though I have lived four lives. The first was childhood and youth. The second was over fifty years ago with the old Russian emigration in England and France. Already old then, those ‘antediluvian’ emigres died out in the last century. I knew them all – the Zernovs, Golitsyns, Andronikovs, Tieshenhausens, Lopukhins, Kovalevskys, Rosenschilds, Meyendorffs, Schememanns, Ossorgins, Kedrovs, Rehbinders, Nelidovs, Struves, Obolenskys, Evetzes, Sollogubs, Losskys, Rodziankos, Bloom, Sakharov, all the old ones. They are all gone now. My third life was from 1997 on, in England, helping to create unity with the freed Russian Church among the vestiges of that emigration.

My fourth life, though becoming apparent already in the 2000s, has been since 2022 in the new and young generation of energy and faith. They know nothing of that old world, with its extreme snobbery and racial exclusivism. Today all parts of the Orthodox Church here, especially Romanians and Greeks, not only accept English people into the Church, but even encourage us and adopt our local saints. Gone are the tiny and poor ghetto chapels of between 10 and 30 ‘holy huddlers’. Today we have mass Orthodoxy, with 200-400 at every service. It was long ago time for the old ghetto-dwellers to adapt and accept the post-Communist mainstream Church, or else close down, as they are doing.

My Background

My writings can be found from the 1980s onwards in several journals and in six published books on the Orthodox Church and Faith in Russia, Western Europe and England and on English history. Many of these have been translated into other languages. Since 2000 I have written on the Orthodox England website and blog and since 2012 I have written in Russian for the Russian website RNL. In 2022 I temporarily wrote for the website of The Saker and in 2023 for the Global South website, when I had to use the pseudonym of Batiushka, ‘for fear of the Jews’. Now I still write on the Orthodox England blog. My writings concern three main themes: authenticity, acculturation and new Local Churches.

My first theme has been faithfulness to the authentic Orthodox Christian Tradition. This means avoiding the deviations to the left-hand side of Westernisation, due to some inferiority complex vis a vis the West, that is, liberalism, modernism and globalism, as especially in the last century, and, on the other hand, avoiding the deviations to the right-hand side of nationalism, due to insecurity, that is, sectarianism, phariseeism and ghettoism, as especially over the last two generations. My second theme has been the acculturation of Orthodox Christianity into Western societies, based on Western unity and communion with the Orthodox Church in the first millennium and on our saints.

This was before the process of spiritual decomposition began in Western Europe, slowly from the reign of the barbarian Charlemagne ‘Father of Europe’, at end of the eighth century on, but far more rapidly and very noticeably, during the eleventh century and after. This brings me to my third theme, the foundation of new Local Churches in the Diaspora. For only through acculturation, based on spiritual and historical fact and without deviations, can authentic new Local Churches be founded, avoiding, for example, the errors of certain in the Orthodox Church in America (OCA), the gallant but failed attempt to found a Local Church in North America, now over fifty years ago.

In the distant past I grew up spiritually in the Russian emigration both in England and in France, among people who had been adults or at least children in Russia before 1917, or, in the cases of the second emigration, adults there before 1945, before they died out. I also lived in the 1970s in Soviet Russia, worked in Greece and studied at the Russian émigré seminary of St Sergius in Paris. I was influenced by seven people. Firstly, there was the Romanian monk, Fr Raphael, son of the famous philosopher and poet Constantin Noica and who is still alive. Secondly, there was Elder Seraphim of Belgorod, a living saint, whose blessing I received through Fr Lev Lebedev in Kursk, whom I met in Russia in 1976.

Then there was Elder Ephraim of Arizona, whom I met on Mt Athos in 1978, Fr Alexei Knyazev, the brilliant rector of the Russian seminary in Paris, fifthly, Archbishop George Tarasov in Paris, who had been a Russian pilot on the Western Front in World War I, then Fr Alexander Trubnikov, the rector of the ROCOR parish outside Paris, where I served for many years, and finally the ever-memorable Archbishop Antony (Bartoshevich) of Western Europe and successor of my ‘spiritual grandfather’, St John of Shanghai. I have been an Orthodox clergyman for over 40 years, serving in France, Portugal and England, and today I serve in England as an archpriest of the Romanian Orthodox Archdiocese.

The Life and Death of the Russian Émigré Church

The tragedy of the Russian emigre Church is that after the Revolution it split into three warring parts. This split lasted until 2007 and, for some fanatics, still exists. These splits were purely political in nature. By far the smallest émigré group until 1991, loyal to the captive ‘Red’ Church inside the USSR, at times put Soviet patriotism above all else. Some of them, intensely nationalistic, defended the Soviet State and the compromises made by its hostage-bishops inside the USSR, such as denying that the Church there was persecuted. After 1991, become through emigration by far the largest of the three groups, most of its members became patriots of the Russian Federation, sometimes also nationalistically.

The second group was largely composed of Saint Petersburg aristocrats and intellectuals, often with German Baltic surnames, based in Paris. These aristocrats, already Westernised long before 1917 and emigration, were often strongly opposed to the Tsar and advocated a compromised Orthodoxy. They were known for their political liberalism and support of the February 1917 overthrow of the Tsar, their ideal being a Constitutional Monarchy or a French-style Republic. They even left the Russian Church and joined the Greek Patriarchate of Constantinople. Over 40% of the small group chose to remain there, though now, over 100 years on, their links with Russia are very tenuous.

By far the largest group, over 80%, was called ROCOR (Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia). This was composed of White Russians. Vigorously anti-Communist, some were not so much Orthodox Christians as people who wanted the downfall of the USSR and the return of their properties and wealth inside Russia. Politically very much on the right, this wing of ROCOR practised a culture, rather than a Faith. They generally had great cultural nostalgia for a vanished State. After World War II, their leading bishops left Europe for the USA. Here the best continued to have an inspiring witness, being, until 1991, the voice of the free Russian Church and faithful to its Tradition, martyrs and confessors.

However, the long-term results were disastrous, as, losing its historical roots in Russia and Europe, the Westernised descendants of the old emigres were co-opted into the CIA. Like others, I used to belong to the non-political, spiritual wing of this Russian émigré Church, most of which with many others I helped reunite with the Russian Church in Moscow in our victory of unity against sectarianism in 2007. However, within a decade, many of its members had reneged on this, refusing to integrate into closer unity. Finally degenerating into a tiny, alien sectarian group, influenced by anti-Russian US politics, it gave way to ‘Orthobros’, incels with Amish-style Calvinism, Lutheranism and Puritanism.

Those of us who know the historic Russian Orthodox Church, the Russian language, history, classical literature and, above all, real Russian people, knew that ROCOR had become an American fake, a ghetto-fantasy degenerated from Russian Orthodoxy, and become irrelevant to mainstream Orthodoxy. It would never contribute to building Local Churches, in Western Europe, the Americas and Oceania. Essentially, it had become psychopathological control freakery, a Disneyfied version of Russian Orthodoxy, and so marginalised itself. In reality, the survival of the Russian emigration is in witness to the Orthodox Faith, in new Local Churches, giving up exclusivism and working closely with other Orthodox.

The Two Problems of the Contemporary Orthodox Church

Today, two major issues face the mainstream of the 200-million strong Orthodox Church, which is made up of 16 Local Churches, on the model of the Holy Trinity of unity in diversity. These issues are the purely political division between the Russian Church, 70% of the whole, and the once prestigious Greek Churches, 7% of the whole. These are now out of communion with one another as a result of the US bribing of the nationalist Hellenist Greek Patriarchate of Constantinople and nationalist ideological pressures on the Russian Patriarchate of Moscow. Secondly, there is the uncanonical situation of the Orthodox Diasporas in Western Europe, the Americas and Oceania, which have no Local Churches.

This Diaspora issue can only be solved once the primary issue between Russian and Greek politicians is solved, for both of these have to agree as pastors with all other Orthodox on setting up new Local Churches for the multinational Orthodox in the Diaspora. Being in communion is the sign of belonging to the Church. And that issue can only be solved by decentralisation, as the conflict between Russians and Greeks was caused precisely by nationalist centralisation, the refusal to decentralise, to let go of power and money and devolve to pastoral work. For this to happen, three Centres, Moscow, Constantinople and Alexandria, need to make concessions. Solutions to this issue could be:

In Moscow

To help distance itself from politically-inspired nationalist influences and to let go, the Patriarchate of Moscow and All Rus could be renamed the Patriarchate of New Jerusalem and All Rus, moving its administrative centre to the New Jerusalem Monastery outside Moscow. It could refrock all Russian Orthodox clergy who were uncanonically ‘defrocked’, for purely political reasons, after 24 February 2022, in Russia, Lithuania, Western Europe and elsewhere. Then it could devolve and decentralise itself, initially establishing four new Local Churches in once Soviet countries, which have for over 30 years been independent republics outside the Russian Federation:

The Kievan Rus Orthodox Church (Kievan Rus being the historic Ukraine, that is, in all probability after the conflict there is over, the 12 provinces of the North-Western and Central Soviet Ukraine), to be led by Metropolitan Onufry of Kiev and his Synod.

The Baltic Orthodox Church, for all Orthodox in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland, to be led by a new Metropolitan of Riga and his Synod.

The Carpatho-Rus and Hungarian Orthodox Church, for all Orthodox in the Zakarpattia province of the old Soviet Ukraine, which will probably be returned to Hungary, and for Orthodox in Hungary.

In conjunction with the Patriarch of Bucharest and his Synod, the Patriarch of New Jerusalem and All Rus and his Synod could jointly grant autocephaly to all Orthodox, bishops and people, under their joint jurisdictions on the territory of the independent Republic of Moldova. This would at last form a single Moldovan Orthodox Church, centred in Chisinau. Moldovan Church unity could at last become real. At the same time the Patriarchate of New Jerusalem could refrock all Orthodox clergy, whom it uncanonically ‘defrocked’ for purely political reasons for joining the former Metropolia of Bessarabia of the Romanian Church, the present Romanian Metropolia centred in Moldova.

In Istanbul

In response to these decentralising concessions by Moscow, a new Patriarch of Constantinople could move the headquarters of that Patriarchate from Istanbul, where fewer than 500 Orthodox actually live, to Thessaloniki in Greece. It would absorb the Greek Orthodox Church, uncanonically set up in Athens by the British 200 years ago, though keeping Turkiye as part of its historic, canonical territory. This would at last free the Church from political interference by the Turkish government. It could recognise the five new Local Churches created by Moscow (and one together with Bucharest) above, instructing its small groups there to join the new Local Churches, and to recognise the situation in Africa, as below.

In Alexandria

The colonial administration of the Greek Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria and his Synod could cede jurisdiction of Africa to found an authentically African Orthodox Church, headed by a single African Patriarch, with the title ‘of Alexandria and All Africa’ and a Synod of mainly African and some Greek and Russian bishops, centred in Kampala. Greek, Cypriot and Russian bishops at present in Africa could either join the new Patriarchate of Alexandria under its African Patriarch, or else return to Greece, Cyprus or Russia. All clergy ‘defrocked’ by the Patriarchate of Alexandra for political reasons since 2019 could be refrocked. Thus, there would be 20 Local Orthodox Churches.

Afterword

These are the first of my hopes for the future of the Orthodox Church. If communion, which is the sign of Orthodox Christianity, can be restored between the three above Local Churches under new Patriarch-shepherds, the path will be open to holding a Council of the whole Church. There can only be one question on the agenda – the situation of the Orthodox Diasporas. There are other questions, but they are all pastoral and can be dealt with by Synods of Local Churches. The Diasporas need new Local Churches, with autocephaly granted by all the Churches together. This would create four new Local Churches; for Western Europe, Northern America; Latin America and the Caribbean; Oceania.

Reflections on Forty Years of Service at the Altar

Quench not the Spirit.

(1 Thessalonians 5, 19-21)

When I was a child, I did not believe in God, I knew God. He was – and is – a fact. I did not seek Him, I knew Him. Fifty years ago, in 1975, the closest disciple of St Silouan confirmed my experience that God is known by the Holy Spirit and that if someone has come to know God by the Holy Spirit, his soul will burn with the love of God by day and night and his soul will not be bound by any earthly thing.

If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you (John 15, 19)

Five years later, in May 1979 in a deep and warm conversation at Philotheou Monastery on Mt Athos, the ever-memorable Fr Ephraim (now of Arizona) confirmed this to me. And so it was that forty years ago I went with fear to St Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Paris to be ordained, believing that our purpose in life is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit, as St Seraphim of Sarov declared.

Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you (Matthew 6, 33)

Now the name ‘Antichrist’ does not mean he who is against Christ, but he who is in place of Christ. In other words, Antichrist does not appear to be outwardly against Christ, he is a substitute for Christ. From the world in which we now are we can conclude that we live in the time before Antichrist, where faith, the presence of the Holy Spirit, is being substituted by falsehood, ‘a den of thieves’.

Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away (2 Timothy 3, 5)

Thus, the most obvious thing that I have noticed about the last forty years of service at the altar has been the persistent determination of satan to destroy all that is spiritual, both directly and indirectly. He has always recruited his agents to substitute for the real Church, to set up a satanic church, where the Holy Spirit cannot abide and is replaced by the pseudo-spiritual, which stems from hatred.

You pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgement, mercy, and faith (Matthew 23, 23)

Forty years ago and more, I had seen how satan used such isms as ecumenism, modernism, liberalism and freemasonry to destroy and then substitute for the Church. They considered the Church had to be brought into line with the anti-spiritual ways of the world, secularism. All who challenged these movements against the Holy Spirit were slandered. Like others, I was one of them.

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

Twenty years ago and more, I saw how the cunning and evil satan changed his tactics to destroy and substitute for the Church. He began using the opposite forces to the first, pretending to be pure, employing such isms as sectarianism, traditionalism, conservatism and the spirit of schism. All who challenged these movements were slandered. Like others, I was and am one of them.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because you build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, and say, if we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Wherefore you are witnesses to yourselves, that you are the children of those who killed the prophets (Matthew 23, 29-31)

All the servants of satan, of both sorts, close churches and forbid missionary work on the pretext of ‘protocols’ or ‘covid’. They replace faith, which is built on real experience of the Holy Spirit, the Giver of life, Who speaks ‘by the prophets’, with mere ‘religion’, the ideology of hired servants. This substitution of ideology for any spiritual experience, which alone gives wisdom, is why faith is dying out.

Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves (Matthew 7, 15)

Thus, Protestants predict that Protestantism in Western countries will die out within a generation, by 2050. Roman Catholicism in Western countries will not be far behind. Both are being replaced by the ideology of secularism, where anything goes, for they have lost their faith and follow the ways of the world. However, in the Church of God, the war against Orthodoxy is just as fierce.

Woe unto you, Pharisees! for you love the uppermost seats in the synagogues, and greetings in the markets (Luke 11, 43)

Satan is working against us in the Church in exactly the same ways. The temptations of power and wealth are the rewards for those who use either ecumenism, modernism, liberalism and freemasonry, or sectarianism, traditionalism, conservatism and the spirit of schism. We avoid power and wealth and all the isms, which they use in order to persecute us.

And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers….My house shall be called the house of prayer; but you have made it a den of thieves (Matt 21, 12-13)

We create life and community, where before there was death and darkness. We grow the culture of life, as pastors, the voice of the people, in our hearts there is no hatred. And we are victorious over the narcissistic, jealous, resentful, corrupt and effeminate, the Establishment elite who love the uppermost seats, who are of their father the devil…for he is a liar, and the father of it (John 8, 44).

The thief comes only to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly (John 10, 10)

Today, the Russian Church, just like the Church of Constantinople, has fallen under the influence of this world. We fight for Orthodox freedom from political deviations. Canon XV of the First and Second Council is clear about those worthy of honour: they have not broken the union of the Church with any schism, but on the contrary, have been diligent to rescue the Church from schisms and divisions.

Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord (Romans 12, 19)

We fight for the Truth of God and the Righteousness of man from the middle ground, from the fourteen Local Churches between the extremes, but among those in the extremes there are many who agree with us. Our role is to ‘knock heads together’ to bring away from the extremes. Like Christ, Who was crucified between the extremes of the two thieves, we too are persecuted for this.

Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Jesus Christ will suffer persecution (2 Timothy 3, 12)

Rome is in crisis and has to recall its legions from the far-flung provinces to protect Rome. The governors of the provinces feel abandoned, threatened by the rebellions of the people against their untruths. But the rebels know what to do, for those who told lies about us have discredited only themselves. Rome will return to where it came from, for it is now known the world over to tell untruths.

Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatever a man sows, that shall he also reap (Galatians 6, 7)

Forty years ago I went to St Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Paris to be ordained. I was mindful of the words that the pen is mightier than the sword, or as St Alexander put it far better: God is not in force, but in truth. Nearly ten years ago it was my joy to open a new church dedicated to St Alexander in my native East Anglia. I know that God is working through His saints to cleanse His Church.

That He might present Her to Himself as a glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that She should be holy and without blemish (Ephesians 5, 27)

Mitred Archpriest Andrew Phillips,

St John’s Orthodox Church,

City of Colchester.

27 January 1985 – 27 January 2025

Fifty Years: Biography of Mitred Archpriest Andrew Phillips since 1 September 1974

After leaving Colchester Royal Grammar School in 1974, where I studied Russian, Latin, French and German, I went to study Russian Literature in Oxford. In 1977 I graduated and qualified as a teacher. Having taught in Thessaloniki for a year, in 1979 I left Greece to study at the Russian Orthodox St Sergius seminary in Paris, meeting the last Paris White Russians who had been adults before 1917. In 1980 I married and then became an Orthodox priest, also working in Paris as a lecturer in European political and cultural history. We had six children (currently with twelve grandchildren – all our children live in Suffolk, Essex or London). Apart from living in Paris, I also spent time in Lisbon from 1992 on, setting up the first Orthodox church there. I started publishing my first books on Church history and theological and pastoral themes in Paris, then in 1997 we returned to England to live in Suffolk.

Here I continued writing, publishing more books, setting up a website, teaching and taking part in broadcasts on Channel 4 and Radio 4. I gave talks at Church conferences in the USA and Australia and also spoke at conferences in Russia and Eastern Europe, notably at official events for the Russian Church reunion in Moscow and in the Kremlin in 2007. In Eastern England I have fundraised and bought church buildings, buying and setting up new Orthodox churches in Felixstowe in 1997, two churches in my native Colchester (at the old Garrison Church) in 2008, Norwich in 2016 and Cambridge in 2020. These are all international parishes, which have resisted any political manipulations, interference or extremes from Greek or Russian alike, keeping to the royal way. This is why our churches are with the Autonomous Metropolia of Western and Southern Europe of the Romanian Church, centred in Paris.