Category Archives: Local Churches

Eastern Europe, Western Europe and the Future of the Orthodox Church in Western Europe after the Western Defeat in the Ukraine

The colonial era is widely accepted to have started in the 15th century…, but in fact colonialism started in the 11th century.

Fadi Lama, Why the West Can’t Win, Clarity Press, 2023

Introduction

Europe

The 10 million square kilometres of what has for several centuries been called Europe is divided into two almost equal halves. The Eastern half is populated very largely by East Slavs and consists of only three countries. It stretches from the Urals in the Russian Federation to the borders of Belarus and the future Ukraine (when the borders of the Ukrainian people have at last been self-determined). It has a population of some 185 million, if we include the smaller numbers who live beyond the Urals, as far as the Pacific coast. The vast majority of them are baptised Orthodox Christians.

The Western half stretches westwards from those borders to the Atlantic coasts of Iceland, Ireland and Portugal. Unlike the Eastern half of Europe, the Western half is divided into forty-one countries and is populated by different races, with some 555 million people, three times more than in the Eastern half. Most of the countries in the far West have since the eleventh century colonised much of the world. By background these are mainly the new Roman Catholics or Protestants, but there are also 55 million of the much older, original Orthodox Christian population, mostly living in the smaller and poorer countries.

Part One

The Eastern Half of Europe After the Conflict in the Ukraine

The future of Russia was already clear to Tsar Nicholas II (+ 1918), who wanted to restore Russia to the era of Tsardom before the Western-minded imperialist, Peter I (+ 1725). Tsar Nicholas II was prevented by aristocratic traitors from this restoration, as he rejected their feudal system of serfdom of the Russian Empire (1721-1917). In his turn, President Putin has today rejected the anti-Russian system of atheism of the Soviet Empire (1917-1991) and the Western system of capitalism of the corrupt oligarchy of the three countries of East Slavdom (1992-2022). This 300-year period and its illusions ended, ironically, thanks to Western sanctions, illegally and suicidally applied to the Russian Federation, after the conflict in the eastern Ukraine became large-scale.

In other words, after a 300-year interruption, Russia and all the East Slavs are about to return to the period of Pre-Imperial Tsardom. This means economic sovereignty and independence, not subservience to the Western Powers and their Globalist ideology. Unlike the Feudal-Capitalist period of the past 300 years (1721-2022), which was chiefly concerned with money-making, as loved by pseudo-White, that is anti-Tsar, Russian emigres, and then by Westernised oligarchs, Tsardom also means social justice. The Revolution came about precisely because of the lack of injustice. Like all Orthodox Christians, Orthodox Russians are socially conservative, but also value social justice, the sources of stable family life and stable national life. Here is the future.

The Western Half of Europe After its Defeat in the Ukraine

The first and second parts of the Great European War, known as World War One and World War Two, were caused by imperialist rivalries in Western Europe, notably the British elite Round Table’s and the German Kaiser’s ambition to exercise global hegemony, controlling the whole world. Through its failed aggression, in 1916 that British ruling class ended up having to begin to cede its dreamed-of global hegemony to the US elite. Failing to manipulate the US for its own purposes, later even the arch-manipulator, the half-American Churchill, was to see his beloved British Empire dismantled by the US. The present conflict in the Ukraine, which is as close to World War Three as we can get, was caused by the similar ambition of the US elite. It tried to reproduce the dream of the British ruling class, to exercise global hegemony, killing ‘to the last Ukrainian’.

That conflict has already lasted for over three years, for ‘as long as it takes’ (= for as long as it takes for the Ukraine to collapse). The EU and UK still refuse to admit the defeat of their Ukrainian proxy. They are too proud to lose face and admit defeat and so continue to justify themselves and talk about making war and not peace (strangely these warmongers want to take part in peace talks!). This refusal to accept reality is so deranged that it is delusional. Thus, the coming end of the Nazi Ukraine will also be the end of the Nazi EU fantasy. In reality, Europe does not exist, there are only the at present forty-one countries of Western Europe. After the eventual collapse of the EU and the UK, the approximately 555 million people of the forty-one nations of Western Europe may perhaps divide into four Regional Confederations of Sovereign Nations.

Part Two

Four Regional Confederations in Western Europe

In the Southern half of 280 million, the two Regional Confederations could be that of the at present eight largely Latin countries of South-Western Europe (France, Monaco, Italy, San Marino, Malta, Portugal, Spain and Andorra, numbering some 185 million), and that of the sixteen countries of South-Eastern Europe (Czechia, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, Romania, Moldova, Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Greece and Cyprus, numbering some 95 million). This smaller group, with its large Orthodox presence would naturally be close to Russian-oriented Eastern Europe.

In the Northern half of 275 million, the two Regional Confederations could be that of the at present ten largely Germanic countries of Northern Europe (Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Ireland and the British Isles, numbering some 110 million), and that of the at present seven largely Germanic countries of Western and Central Europe: the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Poland, numbering some 160 million). These two Northern Confederations have much in common, as do the two Southern Confederations. Perhaps they would combine?

Old and New Countries

However, new countries, forced apart into separate countries for purely political reasons, and those artificially constructed from regions of their neighbours, could reform and reunite. Thus, on the one hand, the now politically divided Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo and perhaps Bosnia-Herzegovina, could reunite into one. On the other hand, the territory of Belgium could be returned to its three component countries, the Netherlands, France and Germany, of which it was artificially composed. And although we presume that Italy and Germany will remain united, this is not certain. Notably, there are great differences between eastern and western Germany and northern and southern Italy.

On the other hand, centralised Spain could at last cede independence to Catalonia and the artificial union of the UK, a failed state, could dissolve back into England, Scotland and Wales. These could finally reclaim their freedom and independence from Britain, and with the long overdue reuniting of Ireland. Thus, that ruthless band of colonial Vikings, raiders and traders (much the same thing), who formed and imposed the British Establishment in their Crusade in 1066, began their worldwide aggression. Their wicked legacy is continued by the British State and its propaganda mouthpieces over nearly a millennium, may at last disappear. Such possible changes would still leave a Western Europe of forty-one countries.

Part Three

The Russian Rejection of a Western European Orthodox Church

In this new reality of Western Europe (effectively, Non-Russian Europe) and Eastern Europe (effectively, Russian Europe), what is the future of Orthodox Christianity in this Western half of Europe? In the last four years, the Russian Church has refused to tackle its own internal schism there, caused by the sociopathic hatred among its converts and their breach of internal communion. If, as it seems, Russian nationalism has taken hold and indifference to Non-Russians is now the norm, the Russian Church will indeed lose everything outside the Russian Federation, where it has already rejected its age-old, best friends. It seems to have turned its back on the West, rejecting the legacy of the old Russian emigration and the hopes of Patriarch Alexis II, who had himself been an emigre. For now the Russian Church is looking to Africa and Asia.

Some prophesy that since 1991 Russia has been condemned to wander in the wilderness for forty years, but that it will be led out to the Promised Land by its Moses-like Saints and only then, in about 2030, will a Tsar come. Only then will come renewed interest and the awaited Great Cleansing of the Church. Indeed, over the last thirty-five years the Vatican-style homosexualisation of the Moscow episcopate has been accompanied by pseudo-intellectualism, ecumenism and financial corruption a la Alfeev. The abandonment of the Western world by Moscow and its reduction to ghetto nationalism has left a vacuum in its discipline. This is being filled in part by the CIA takeover of the New York branch of the Russian Church, with its sectarian doctrine of the rebaptism not only of Catholics and Protestants, but also of other Orthodox Christians.

The Greek Rejection of a Western European Orthodox Church

This new self-imposed irrelevance of all parts of the Russian Church to the foundation of a new Local Church of Western Europe repeats the same self-imposed irrelevance of the Greek Church of Constantinople. The latter also turned its back on a Western European Local Church, though several decades ago, as a result of Greek nationalism. We remember many, many incidents of such nationalism over the last sixty years, with Western Europeans being told by Greek archbishops and priests to ‘go away’ (in fact, much less politely than that) or being told to ‘join the Anglicans’ or ‘become a Catholic’. One well-known Cypriot ‘spiritual father’, who possessed a doctorate, informing us that Orthodoxy only exists because of Plato and Aristotle, ‘who are virtually saints’, as without those pagan Greeks ‘there would never have been any Christianity’!

Over the last sixty years the Vatican-style homosexualisation of the episcopate of Constantinople has gone hand in hand with the same pseudo-intellectualism, ecumenism and financial corruption, this time, a la Zisioulas. It is curious to see how these four phenomena are always interconnected in both Churches. The recent revelation, long-rumoured, that the CIA paid the Phanar $15 million (in fact $20 million, but the corrupt Kiev regime filched $5 million for its own slush fund) to found their fake gangster Church in the Ukraine is symbolic of the spiritual decadence. After all, the CIA escorted under threat of death Patriarch Maximos V to Switzerland in 1948, since when the City has indeed been lost, captive to politicking. Only a new Patriarch can ‘retire’ all the homosexual bishops and cleanse the Phanar, in effect refounding the Patriarchate.

Conclusion: The Input of the Romanian Orthodox Church

With both the Greek Orthodox and Russian Orthodox worlds fallen to political nationalism in the last few years, and without hope, for now, of restoring the old multinational catholicity of Russian Orthodoxy, now out of communion with many other Orthodox, who can we local Orthodox look to? Abandoned by Greeks and Russians alike, the responsibility for the possible foundation of a future Western European Orthodox Church falls for now to the second largest Local Orthodox Church, the Romanian, if only because of its size.

The Romanian language is not only a Latin language which uses the Latin alphabet, but the Romanian Orthodox Church is also in communion with all the Local Churches, unlike the Greeks and the Russians. The Romanian Church is also by far the largest in Western Europe, with 5 million baptised, 1,153 churches and 10 bishops. However, a future new Local Church must encompass all Orthodox, inclusively, non-politically and non-nationalistically. This can only come in an alliance of Churches, in the spirit of catholicity of the whole Church.

 

 

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.

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.

 

 

 

 

Breaking through the Glass Ceiling of the Empires: Why Autocephalies are Now Inevitable

The most intensely centralised, that is, imperialistic, Christian establishment that ever existed was – and is – Papal Rome. Opposition to it began immediately after it had been institutionalised by its schism in the eleventh century (See The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe 950-1250 by R.I. Moore). There followed violent Papally-sponsored military genocides – the so-called ‘crusades’ – massacres, inquisitions, invasions and hatreds all over Europe. In the sixteenth century the previously outwardly imperialist edifice of Rome came tumbling down in appalling wars and violence against those who protested against it, who were aptly called Protestants.

The second imitation of this centralised establishment came in the ‘Second Rome’, which meant Greek Orthodox in Constantinople. Through their imperialist centralisation, they had encouraged the splits from the Church of the Copts, Syrians and Armenians. Its centralised control intensified in the second millennium, in Russia and then the Balkans, notably in Bulgaria, and continues today in its attempts at centralisation in Czechoslovakia, Macedonia and, above all, in the Ukraine, with wild threats to take away independence from all others. Its imperialistic actions have now created a foolish and unnecessary schism with those far bigger than themselves, those who claim to be the ‘Third Rome’.

This ‘Third Rome’ is Moscow, Russia, where Imperialist centralisation created the ‘Old Ritualist’ schism in the seventeenth century and continues, though they were obliged in the last century to concede autocephaly (independence) to the Orthodox Churches in Poland, Czechoslovakia and a group in North America. Now, as a result of its almost control freak insistence on centralisation, it is going to be obliged to decentralise more seriously, firstly to the Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Carpatho-Russia (with Austria-Hungary), the Baltics, Central Asia, and then to Western Europe, North America, Latin America and Oceania, although here this will be in collaboration with other Local Orthodox Churches.

Thus, this process of decentralisation or autocephalisation was made inevitable by the imperialist centralisation of each centre, which all claimed to be a ‘Rome’. None of them, strangely enough, claimed to be a ‘Second Jerusalem’, which is the centre of the Christian Faith, whereas Rome was always the enemy of the Faith. The fact is that the treatment by all three Romes of others of a different ethnicity as second-class citizens (or third-class citizens in many cases) has inevitably led to the desire for independence. The First Rome created the desire for independence among the Germanic peoples, the Second Rome among Non-Greeks, and the Third Rome among Non-Russians. There are no surprises here.

Church life has for 2,000 years been characterised by centralising forces and decentralising forces. Thus, the first Orthodox Christians lived scattered, decentralised, living in what was in fact autocephaly, in Ephesus, Corinth, Colossae, Galatia, Philippi, Thessaloniki, Rome etc. Then in the fourth century came the imperial period and there emerged the centralising forces of the five Patriarchates, the ‘Pentarchy’ of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. In the last two centuries, the last four very depopulated centres have been falling apart. In the last 150 years, we have with the fall of empires seen the number of Autocephalous Churches double, going from eight to sixteen.

These new Churches are in Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, America, Albania and Macedonia. With the geographical spread of the Orthodox Church, the foundation of even more Local Churches is going to become inevitable. As a result of the centralising forces, the decentralising forces have taken over. People feel oppressed by the centralisation of the old centres, which still cling on to power. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. It is Newton’s Third Law. Romanising/Papalising centralisation has lost. We no longer live in the Imperial period, initiated by Constantine. Since 1917 we have been living in the post-Constantinian period. The glass ceiling is breaking.

For centralisation, the limiting of control to small cliques, entails corruption. These cliques are formed by love of money and power. In the case of the First Rome, this was corruption and domination by pedophiles and other perverts (any visitor to the Vatican can see the pedophilia from the frescoes), and financial corruption. In the case of the Second and Third Romes, firstly backstabbing homosexuality leads to blackmail, and secondly the love of luxury leads to bribery. All this creates a glass ceiling which ensures that spirituality, pastorship and competence are excluded and are replaced by bureaucracy, careerism and narcissism. And rule without the Holy Spirit is no rule at all.

The Long March to the Inevitable Local Church of Western Europe

I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!

Martin Luther King, 1968

Introduction

One of the main hopes in my life has been Church unity and to see a united Local Church here one day. From the outset I could see that the forces of division were very strong. However, I still did not want unity at any price, unprincipled unity, but unity in Truth and in Love. Such unity is only possible once the Church administration is free of politics and respects and tolerates others. It is unity in Christ. Ignorance, narrowness and judgementalism are to be cast aside. However, the existence of a Local Church cannot be an end in itself.

We have the example of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA).  It was a very brave move to establish the OCA, but over 50 years on we can see that it has been a failure. We have to learn from that. As in that example, all the impediments to establishing an authentic Local Church anywhere, in our case, in Western Europe, are ideological, top-down problems, which come from the elite. These impediments are all by definition divisive, not unitive, and therefore cannot build a Local Church. There are three impediments, namely:

Nationalism

When I was young, any young person who approached Greek, Serbian, Romanian or Bulgarian Orthodox churches and asked to join was told, at best, to ‘go away’. ‘You are not of our nationality’. The only Orthodox Church which would accept those not of its nationality was the Russian Church. Unfortunately, the Russians were divided into three anti-unity factions for purely political, reasons. They concerned differing attitudes towards the then Soviet regime in Russia. Nevertheless, we had to be patient. We had no other choice, despite the squabbles imposed top-down on pastors and people. For example, one of these Russian groups was based around a personality cult with indecent undertones. I refused the priesthood there and we left. We sought Christ, not sensualists. It collapsed, as soon as the object of the cult had died. However, we realised that our task, to help bring unity to these three groups, could only be successful once the cause of division, the Soviet regime, had fallen.

In North America, there seemed to be some hope in the Orthodox Church in America (OCA), founded in 1970, which claimed to be the Church for all Orthodox in North America. However, it attracted relatively few of the Orthodox population, only about 10%. This was because it was unable to accept different nationalities, languages, calendars and customs, as it too fell into nationalism, namely, into American nationalism, and tried to impose ‘Americanism’ on all. In other words, it replaced Greek, Russian and other nationalisms with American nationalism and so could not become a Local Church for all. So some criticised it as ‘Coca-Cola Orthodoxy’, as they found much of it turned not towards the spiritual, but towards the lowest common denominator. Some there cruelly imposed the English language and made it obligatory, they had a Protestant spirit, an anti-monastic and modernistic ethos, and created spiritual emptiness, failing to provide the people with spiritual food.

Ecumenism

In the 70s and right up to the early 2000s many Orthodox bishops, some under political pressure, others because they were just superficial careerists and bureaucrats and had little faith, were engaged in a purely political movement called ecumenism. Now, the idea that Orthodox should be good neighbours with Roman Catholic and Protestants is of course accepted by all, except by the pathologically ill (see below). However, ecumenism, as such, is a political ideology, involving freemasonry (I was once promised the priesthood, if I agreed to become a freemason). Ecumenism involved compromises with the Faith, known as modernism, liberalism and, in general, ‘new calendarism’. This is completely unacceptable to anyone with an Orthodox consciousness and who is rooted in our Orthodoxy of the monasteries, pastors and people.

Typically of the ecumenists, many Greek bishops then declared that there was no difference between different Christians; as phyletists (racists) they sent English people away and instructed them to become Anglicans; in the 70s one Russian Metropolitan openly gave communion to Jesuits, whom he admired for their wealth and power (later he died in the arms of a Pope), giving rise to speculation that he had been a secret cardinal; another aristocratic ‘protopresbyter’ celebrated the liturgy in France with the filioque (!), so that ‘the Catholics will not be shocked’ and suggested ‘structures in waiting’, that is, there was no need for a Local Church, as we should wait to be absorbed into Roman Catholicism. true, the ecumenist danger has diminished over the last decade or so, but only to be replaced by yet the latest deformation, described below.

Pathology

The third and no less divisive ideology which impedes the development of a Local Church is neither nationalist, nor ecumenist, but pathological. This stems from immigrant inferiority complexes or else from the insecurity complexes of neophytes. The first complexes come from the second and third generations of immigrants who suffer from insecurity and want to make out that they have some exclusive ideological truth, which condemns all others who do not confess it. This is highly divisive and will never lead to the formation of a Local Church, which requires not intolerance and, even less, fanaticism, but openness to all. Such people are concerned only with exclusivism, to the point of the esoteric. The second set of complexes come from a pathological and unChristian need to condemn those who come from the same original background as the neophyte.

I remember a comment about one Dutch convert to Orthodoxy who came from a strong Roman Catholic family: ‘I am not sure if he is Orthodox, but he certainly is anti-Roman Catholic’. This complex illustrates that it is pathological and can reach proportions of hatred and jealousy which reach psychiatric depths. Such people never belong to the Orthodox Church, but always to sects and are capable of making captive parts of the Orthodox Church into schismatic sects and cults. This can be seen most obviously among old calendarists, but not only. Groups which have lost their ethnic base, like ROCOR and Antioch, and have to recruit from unstable converts, can be prone to such psychopathological fanaticism and exclusivism. Fortunately, such groups are very small and do not impede the majority, who are concerned with the millions of mass Orthodoxy.

Conclusion

What is the situation today? The pathological attract the internet generation of incels and other lonely and often unstable individuals, and not families. There is clearly a psychological disease here. This trend will not continue, for only families are the continuity of the Church down the generations. As for ecumenism, it died after the fall of Communist persecution and nobody talks about it today, though modernism and liberalism are still alive, especially among the old generation. As regards nationalism, the situation has changed.

Unlike fifty years ago, today, ironically, it is the Russian Church which has turned to nationalism and for now is in schism, largely turning its back on Non-Russians and on a Local Church. The problem is that pastors have been replaced by politicians and monks by managers. Now others, especially the Greek and Romanian Churches, which are in any case far larger than the Russian in the Diaspora, are generally turning away from nationalism and towards local people. Here there is at last hope for the future Local Church of Western Europe.

 

Now It Can Be Told: Reminiscences II: The ROCOR Tragedy: How It Entered into Communion with the Moscow Patriarchate and Then De Facto Left It

Introduction: The Background

After the Soviet Union fell in 1991, large numbers of ex-Soviet citizens settled in the West. The Orthodox among them, then about 1% of the total, went to wherever there was a Russian-speaking church. By 1990 the parishes of the old and dying ROCOR were almost empty, as the emigres had almost totally failed to pass on the Faith to their descendants. In 1992 I even had to set up a completely new parish in Lisbon for the new ex-Soviet emigres, though still under ROCOR. By 2000 all ROCOR parishes had been revitalised, but with ex-Soviet Russians. Moreover, the ROCOR bishops at the top, now almost all of the second generation or converts, had to ordain many of the ‘Soviets’ priests – there was nobody else left to ordain.

As a result, it gradually dawned even on the strongly anti-Soviet, often rather dry and cold, ROCOR bishops that there would have to be a reconciliation with Moscow. Moscow was, after all, 99% of the whole Russian Orthodox Church, and, by then, ex-Soviet Russians already formed 90% of their tiny émigré Church. Ex-Soviet clergy and parishioners understood nothing of the hair-splitting arguments against Moscow of the old émigrés and their descendants and converts.

They simply concelebrated with Moscow whenever they wanted and the people took communion freely in Moscow churches. Clearly, ROCOR bishops were losing control. The split between Moscow and the ROCOR group had been outlived. It was totally irrelevant to the post-Soviet masses, ‘the mob’, as one aristocratic and monocled (!) ROCOR bishop insultingly called them on the Russian Church website pravoslavie.ru, to the scandal of all!

To Moscow

Thus, the bishops were gradually forced by weight of numbers to lead the few remaining children of ROCOR emigres to concelebrate with Moscow. Having usurped the very elderly Metropolitan Vitaly in New York, who for them had outlived his age and who anyway had dementia, in 2001, ambitious bishops began to move towards talks with Moscow. These talks finally resulted in the historic Patriarchal and émigré concelebration in Moscow in 2007, where I was, I believe, the only Non-Russian priest present. However, even this reconciliation did not stop the bullying and intimidation of the non-aristocratic, not to say peasant, bishop-victims inside the Synod by the ‘princes of the Church’, the political wing of the utterly divided ROCOR Synod.

Their victims ranged from the meek and saintly Slovak Metr Laurus to the equally meek and mild Ukrainian Metr Hilarion, who feared the ‘politicos’, as he openly told us, almost trembling, and to Patriarch Kyrill himself. The latter was astonished and very, very upset by the categorical refusal of the politico bishops to accept the Patriarch’s very generous, canonical and utterly logical suggestion (it was in 2012 or soon after) to restructure ROCOR into Metropolia, in the USA, in Oceania and in Western Europe.

They even rejected his generous offer for a ROCOR bishop to become Metropolitan of a united Russian Orthodox Church of Western Europe, the foundation of the future Local Church. Rarely has there been such a tragic rejection of Divine destiny towards forming new Local Churches. This rejection, some ten years ago now, was in fact the turning-point for ROCOR. From that moment on, it reverted to control by its ‘princes of the Church’ political wing, concerned only with money and property, abandoning its spiritual, ‘Johannite’ (St John of Shanghai) tradition. Their predecessors had persecuted St John, now they would continue, persecuting St John’s spiritual descendants.

Underlying Sectarianism Returns

With this tragic refusal to accept its destiny, ROCOR had preferred suicidal, elitist, exclusivist isolation to playing the leading role in forming future Local Churches in Western Europe and elsewhere. The offer had been made on a golden plate and been rejected. The offer would not be made by offended Moscow again. It was clear that others would now have to play that role. ROCOR had sidelined itself, making itself irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, due to its nationalist exclusivism and pharisaic superiority complex, much, much developed by recent and unintegrated fanatical converts of a Protestant background. Moscow was at a loss, since it simply did not have the candidates with the linguistic, administrative and moral ability to lead its Churches outside Russia.

Thus, ROCOR lost the opportunity to head the establishment of three Metropolias: one to lead to the long-overdue Autocephalous Orthodox Church of Western Europe; in North America to merge positively with the OCA; finally, to set up a new Metropolia for the Continent of Oceania. The task of establishing just a Russian Orthodox Metropolia in Western Europe now went to Moscow, eventually through the efficient Metropolitan Nestor, supported by the very small, Paris-based Archdiocese of Western Europe, led by its Metropolitan Jean (Renneteau).

In 2021, ROCOR decided to take part in the American-led schism against the Moscow Metropolitan Jean, leading the emigres to split from that part of Moscow and so even further into self-isolation. The only occasional concelebrations would now be with highly conservative Antiochian, ‘more Orthodox than the Orthodox’, converts. The rest of the Orthodox Church was rejected. Moscow was secretly, and increasingly openly, despised; Greeks, Romanians and Moldovans openly hated; and in 2024, when the Serbian Orthodox Church invited a delegation from New York to try and bring ROCOR back from the brink, it also failed. No Church can be founded on hatred.

Conclusion: The Future

As one Russian Orthodox Metropolitan said to me of one ROCOR hierarch in 2012: ‘His Russian is superb, better than that of Russians, his liturgical knowledge second to none, but where is his love’? Thanks to sectarianism, ROCOR is rapidly losing its jurisdiction in Western Europe, just as it lost that in Vlasovite ROCOR South America. Now that Moscow is at last starting to send out competent, non-corrupt and non-homosexual bishops to Western Europe, ROCOR is increasingly looking like a small, right-wing American sect, with little influence outside its sectarian converts and their ghettoes.

Today, with the tragic conflict in the Ukraine ongoing, Moscow is isolated by Russian nationalism, but the emigres are isolated by convert exclusivism. The pro-Zelensky attitude of ROCOR since 2022, even demanding that Russian troops stop liberating the Donbass from Kiev-led genocide (!), is not in fact pro-Ukrainian, but pro-CIA. Unsurprisingly, ROCOR is now seen as treasonous by Moscow, but with its Russian-ness it is also seen as totally unacceptable by the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Metr Onufry, just as it was by post-1945 Ukrainian (and Belarussian) emigres.

As a result, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has over the last two years opened up a hundred parishes in Western Europe, which have nothing to do with ROCOR. As for Moldovans, they have been leaving the Russian Church for the Romanian Church, offended by Russian racism, just like the Ukrainians and so nearly all other Non-Russians. It is clear that other Local Churches will have to take on the mantle of establishing a multinational Local Church of Western Europe. Tragically, the dream of the ever-memorable Patriarch Alexis II of Moscow of forming a Local Church in Western Europe is for now dead. In the future only a radical change of policy and repentance could bring the constituent parts of the Russian Church in the Diaspora, now in schism, back to contributing to that great project, which others have now been put in charge of.

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

 

 

What Does it Need to Found a Local Church in the Diaspora?

The Orthodox Diasporas in the Western world have so far given birth to only one new, albeit compromised, Local Church. This is the Orthodox Church in America (OCA), founded over 50 years ago. Much disputed by others, it has unfortunately been a failure – the vast majority of Orthodox who live in Northern America have not joined it and do not wish to. It has not united Orthodox. However, it must be said, it has been a bold failure and its failure is hardly a matter for rejoicing. It was bold because elsewhere founding a new Local Church has not even been tried. We should learn from the OCA’s strengths as well as from its weaknesses.

True, in England, there was in the 1970s an attempt not to build a multinational Local Church, but a multinational or, at that time, trinational, chapel. This was in Oxford and involved émigré Russian (and English) academics, Greeks and Serbs. It was never going to work. The Serbs never took part, apart from a certain rather effeminate bishop who was then ‘disappeared’. It was set up in a tiny, octagonal, Methodist-looking chapel, not at all traditional on the outside. Then the ‘Russians’ left it through ejection and miraculously managed to set up their own English-language chapel elsewhere.

It left Greeks and a tiny number of ex-Anglican, pseudo-Russian Bloomite elitists in their Methodist-looking chapel. Now that large numbers of new Romanian immigrants have set up their own church in Oxford, the whole experiment is best forgotten. The Oxford chapel represents not even 10% of local Orthodox, rather like the OCA representation in Northern America. Why these failures? It is always ideologies that destroy the unity required for a Local Church, because ideologies are always by definition exclusive.

For example, new calendarism (one of the great failings of the OCA) and old calendarism (one of the great failings of the new 2020s ROCOR sect) are ideological enemies, as are political and nationalist ideologies, like those of the Greek nationalist Second Rome and the Russian nationalist Third Rome. Neither of them ever learned from the failure of the First Rome with its equally nationalist ‘Roman Catholicism’ (a contradiction in terms). All of these isms operate against and are destructive of any multinational Church, for any Diaspora Church must by definition be multinational, not nationalist. Only the concept of a Second Jerusalem can be successful. This, for example, was where the Russian Church failed, and three times over. Thus:

In Russian émigré Paris, French liberal intellectualism, imported back from Saint Petersburg, did nothing for the Paris Russians and as a result their jurisdiction became very small because exclusive. But at least, small, they were not corrupted by money, like the other two.

In the émigré ‘Russian Orthodox’ Church Outside Russia (ROCOR), the substitution of the subtle moderation of Russian émigré Orthodoxy for the very unsubtle extremism of US convert Orthodoxy. Well-financed Lutheran fanaticism was substituted for real Christianity. That is spiritual suicide, for no-one apart from crazy and uncharitable converts is interested.

The Moscow Patriarchate itself has been badly served both by Soviet nationalism and the corrupting riches of the post-Soviet episcopate together with their sexual perversions, as we can see at this very moment. But what has been rumoured for years in Moscow and elsewhere, is only the tip of the iceberg. The MP and ROCOR have to be cleansed. An antique-filled seaside cottage (cottage, not the antique-filled Victorian house, that is another story) on the south coast of England (in the nineteenth century gay Anglican bishops would also ‘resort’ to south-coast Brighton) is not the solution.

In England, we Orthodox will be neither pro-Soviet, nor pro-American, but faithful to local realities. You can only build a Local Church, if you want it and believe in it.

 

The Popular Revolt in the West and National Conservatism

A spectre haunts Europe. It is the spectre of popular insurrection against the narcissistic Globalist elite. This elite has been appointed to rule the peoples of the Secularist Western world and has only contempt for its peoples. Now the people are getting their own back. In Hungary Orban, in Slovakia Fico (whom they tried to assassinate), in France Le Pen, in Germany the AfD, in the UK Farage, in Italy Meloni, in the Netherlands Wilders, in the US Trump, in Spain, Poland and almost everywhere, the people are revolting. The people want a Gaullist Europe of the Nations and a World of Nation-States, not Globalism.

They want both social conservatism, that is, personal responsibility, and social justice, that is care for others, a social safety net for the weak. What they do not want is social liberalism with its anti-family and anti-national ethos and LGBT ideology, nor do they want social injustice, that is the Western-imposed system of oligarchy, rule by billionaires. Although the peoples of the West do not yet know it, they are preparing their about-to-be-freed nations to join the World Alliance of BRICS. This is the already born and growing replacement for that hopelessly outdated anachronism, the post-World War II United Nations.

As a result, the Western elite is panicking. It is losing its millennial position of world domination and sees its ideology of supremacism, known as hegemony or unipolarity, utterly discredited. This is what the elite inherited from its feudal ancestors. At the centre of this panic is the Ukraine and the coming US elections. The Western elite has attacked another Civilisation, Christian Civilisation, led by the Russian Superpower. In desperation, it is now committing acts of terrorism. Western extremists even want to raise conscript armies in Europe, in Sweden, Germany and the UK for another ‘forever war’.

However, young people in the West do not want to fight and die for the Ukraine, with which they have nothing in common. It is not as though our own countries are being attacked. They do not want to fight, and their parents do not want them to fight, in order to keep the Western elite in their millennial power and luxury. All understand that this is self-justification, the elite wants others to die for them, ‘to the last Ukrainian’ and to the last Western ‘pleb’. For that is all we are to the elite, ‘plebs’, serfs who are just as expendable as were our ancestors in two World Wars, the lions led by the donkeys.

To the elite the people oppose ‘National Conservatism’. What is this? In short, it is respect, that is, respect for self, for the family, for the nation-state and for the Divine Being, the Source of all spiritual and so moral values. We want social justice, but also traditional values, the best of the old-fashioned left and of the old-fashioned right. We resist the anti-patriotic Globalism of the cosmopolitan elite and all its corrosive effects on traditional faith, national identity, families and individuals. We want the resurrection of all the countries of the world, especially of our own Western countries, which are already toppling.

The Globalist ideology is satanic for it consists of uniting the world by force. Then it will be submitted to one dictator by reducing everything in it to the lowest common denominator – bread and circuses, consumerism and the media. This is the old pagan Roman imperialism: believe whatever you want, as long as you bow down to the Emperor and obey him in everything important. Those who are behind the thrones in Washington and Brussels know what they are doing. Those Globalists hasten to do the bidding of their master Satan who wants all to unite under his puppet. We the patriots oppose them to the death.

However, we are now at the turning-point of the elite’s millennial era with Project Ukraine. The Globalists are desperate not to be seen losing in the Ukraine before the US election in November. Facing inevitable defeat, first they are trying terrorism, slitting the throat of an Orthodox priest on the Feast of Pentecost and murdering holidaymakers on a beach in the Crimea, slaughtering more children and injuring many others with cluster munitions. Then they will consider even the nuclear option. Such is the price of their hubris, their superiority complex, born of their arrogance and ignorance.

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!