Category Archives: Orthodox Life

The Orthodox Church Presence in the United Kingdom in 2026

The situation of the Orthodox Churches in the UK has been transformed in the last 25 years, almost as to be unrecognisable.

  1. Two Large Groups 

There are two large Orthodox immigrant groups in the UK today, the Romanian-speaking and the Greek-speaking.

Romanians and Moldovans

As a result of immigration since the Year 2000, though mostly since Romania joined the EU in 2007, Romanians and Moldovans now number nearly 2% of the UK population of 70 million. Indeed, some parts of London seem to speak as much Romanian as English. However, having Romanian nationality does not mean being a practising Romanian Orthodox, just as being ‘British’ does not mean being a practising Protestant – only about 1% are, as is witnessed to by the thousands of closed or nearly empty Protestant church buildings.

At most, only about 5% of Romanians practise their Faith every Sunday, though the proportion of practising Orthodox Moldovans, of whom there are over 100,000, is about 10%. (In other Orthodox countries, like Russia and Greece, the proportion of practising Orthodox is as low as 1% or 2%). The rest are only nominal Orthodox, that is, cultural Orthodox, for whom Orthodox Christianity is a national symbol like the national flag, but little more. Certainly, spiritual and moral interests among them are very weak.

Thus, the Romanian presence is very new in the UK and Romanians have only recently obtained a bishop, their young and dynamic Moldovan archbishop, though there is also another young Romanian bishop in Ireland. The Romanian Archdiocese has only recently been organising itself, buying and frescoing or renting empty churches for several hundred parishioners every Sunday. However, it has been speeding ahead in the last two years and encourages the use of English, though so far only four clergy out of 133 are native.

However, the number of clergy seems to be doubling every three years and all Romanian clergy, nearly all under the age of 45, are trained, many have doctorates and master’s degrees, and most speak excellent English. The Archdiocese operates efficiently on a Deanery system, but there are plenty of candidates to be bishops and four small monasteries. Given the huge energy and potential here, there is no reason to think that there will not be 300 to 400 priests and two or three bishops within a few years. 

Greeks and Cypriots

The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese, in fact mainly Cypriot, is much older than the Romanian, as for the most part it dates back to immigration from the 1920s and then from the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Although with some 250,000 faithful on paper, but only 5% practising at most, it is far better organised than the Romanian. Its episcopate has been here much longer, over a century. Its parishes, though not its property-poor Archdiocese, own outright hundreds of properties and it has five bishops and some 200 clergy. However, numerically it is far smaller than the Romanians and Moldovans, and most of its people and clergy, immigrants from over 50 years ago, are elderly and dying out.

Young people and children who frequent its parishes are virtually all Romanians, who do not have a Romanian church any closer. Can the Greek Archdiocese survive? After decades of telling interested English people literally to go away (thus, founding a largely English Greek Old Calendarist group, which formed in protest at their racist rejection by the Greek Archdiocese – see below), it has at last very recently started receiving Non-Greeks into the Church.

This is probably much too little and much too late, but all is still possible. This is still the second force in Orthodoxy in the UK and some of its clergy are excellent and impressive. Some London parishes get hundreds of people every Sunday. It also has the only large monastery and convent, under a Greek abbot, with some 30-40 monks and nuns, in the country, though most of the nuns are Romanian. The Greek and Romanian Archdioceses generally work well together and see eye to eye on many, though not all, things.

  1. Three Small National Groups

Both the above groups have well over 100 priests each and many large parishes with hundreds of faithful in attendance every Sunday. Now we turn to far smaller groups, with only about 20 priests in each and much smaller parishes, often between only 20 to 50 people. Their dioceses number well under 5,000 in all. 

Serbian

This group now has a local bishop and does have several larger parishes. However, it remains nationalistic and rather closed to Non-Serbs.

Antiochian

Although its kindly bishop is Arab, this very new diocese consists almost wholly of ex-Anglicans, other ex-Protestants and of highly Anglicised immigrants. This is a small group with about 20 clergy and without Orthodox seminary education and small parishes, perhaps with 2,000 faithful in all. However, it is very active and zealous in proselytising among Anglicans and Protestants, ambitiously hoping to grow and seeing itself as a future ‘British Orthodox Church’, which would cater exclusively for those who see themselves as ex-Protestant British. (Most do not). Starting from virtually nothing some thirty years ago and growing very slowly, it is difficult to see how it will arrive at such ambitions when it is so tiny, but it is very persistent.

Russian

Once a small, but active group, even though this diocese has a Russian bishop, it is now ageing and clearly dying out, except for its large Russian London and smaller English Oxford churches. Its inactivity has been reinforced by the conflict in the Ukraine, which has made the Russian Church very unpopular and closed for the present. Moreover, the current political schism between the Russian Church and the Greek Church has made it very isolated. The impression is that political circumstances and isolation have made this Russian group into something of a ghetto. On the other hand, it also has two national Moldovan parishes in England and several more Moldovan parishes in Ireland, so all is not yet lost, unless the Moldovans decide to join the Romanian Church, as others already have done.

  1. Four Micro-Groups

We now move to four even smaller groups with between one and four active small parishes, so small that most are without a local bishop and have very little property of their own.

Paris Archdiocese

Officially part of the Russian Church, this tiny group, probably numbering fewer than two hundred faithful, hardly any of whom are Russian, does now have a bishop in Scotland, appointed from Moscow. This is because of Moscow’s dissatisfaction with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia’s failure to lead the way in Orthodox missionary work and instead become the Russian Old Calendarist Church (see below), losing fifteen clergy and many of its parishes on account of its sectarianism. It is difficult to see how the Paris Archdiocese presence here can grow in view of competition from Antioch and elsewhere, but who knows.

Ukrainian

The canonical Church in the Ukraine, under Metropolitan Onufry in Kiev, has recently opened two small national parishes in England, using rented premises. (There are some other largely political Ukrainian ultra-nationalist groups, but none is in communion with the Orthodox Church. With them the Ukrainian flag seems to be more important than the cross).

Bulgarian

This very small group is centred in premises belonging to the Bulgarian Embassy in London.

Georgian

This very small national group caters for Georgians living in London. It seems to have little to do with any other Orthodox.

  1. Two Non-Canonical Sects: Greek and Russian

There are also two small non-canonical Orthodox sects, one ‘Greek’ Old Calendarist (very few of them are actually Greek) and the other ‘Russian’ Old Calendarist (only about half of the people and no clergy are actually Russian). The Greek group of half a dozen clergymen, a small monastery in Surrey, a died-out convent and no bishop, is called the ‘Diocese of Richmond’. It is issued from what has become the ‘Russian’ Old Calendarist group from the USA, whose present American bishop does actually live in Richmond, in south-west London. He grandiosely claims to be ‘Bishop of Western Europe’, where he also has a dozen mostly very small parishes, mainly run by Non-Russians.

Both groups rebaptise Non-Orthodox (and some Orthodox) and refuse to collaborate with the Orthodox Church, though officially the Russian group is supposed to be linked to the Russian Church in Moscow. This self-imposed isolation is because both consider themselves to be ‘the One True Church’. Together they could make a single group numbering about 15 priests and some 600 laypeople. The trouble is that they attack everyone else and each other, like old-fashioned Protestant sects (like their American bishop, many are ex-Protestants), both claiming exclusivity. This is why they attract very conservative and sectarian ex-Protestants, who are looking for some sort of certainty in the woke world.

 

 

The Russian Nationalist and Imperialist Church or a Trinity of East Slav Orthodox Churches?

By this all men shall know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.

Jn. 13, 34

You ask why I commemorate Patriarch Aleksei of Moscow. You say, ‘He’s a Soviet!’ I tell you, ‘Inside Soviet Rus is Holy Rus! God has not abandoned our people’.

St John of Shanghai and Western Europe

Foreword: ‘Princes of the Church’

I was brought up in the old, persecuted Russian Orthodox Church of St John of Shanghai and Western Europe, who himself was persecuted, suspended and put on trial by nationalist and imperialist ROCOR bishops, who also wanted to defrock him. For forty-seven years I remained faithful to that Church, until it became abundantly clear, in early 2022 before operations in the Ukraine, that the once Persecuted Church, which we had so loved, had become the Persecuting Church.

Worse still, the persecutors were shown to be none other than ROCOR’s newly-appointed, untrained, half-baked bishops. Those who called themselves ‘princes of the Church’ were those who loved money, stole, lied, slandered and cheated. The old bishops who belonged to the Tsar and whom we so loved and respected, must be spinning in their graves. How did this happen? Below I recount the story.

The Ukraine Tragedy and the Future of the Russian Church 

The armies of two brotherly peoples, both East Slav and both largely Orthodox Christian by history and culture, have been slaughtering one another for nearly five years in a war of attrition, just as in WWII. As a war of attrition, it will end just as suddenly. Two million have been killed or maimed, some 90% of them Ukrainians. Several thousand civilians have also been caught up in this since 2014 and died, mostly Russians (14,000 between 2014 and 2022 alone), let alone those killed in the NATO-armed Ukrainian invasion of Russia in 2024, run by NATO from Wiesbaden. And well over seven million Ukrainians have fled their country, heading, in almost equal numbers, east to Russia and west to Western Europe. They refused to be recruited by violence and needlessly die for the Globalists, who are being paid for Kiev’s NATO proxy Army to die.

Meanwhile, the majority of baptised Orthodox, whether practising or not, in both countries, as well as in Belarus and other countries in the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church, look on many bishops as bullying bandits, feudal mini-oligarchs (I quote Russian clergy and laity here), who, like the New ROCOR ones, are out to steal their churches. And that mentality feeds down to many priests, obliged to squeeze money out of their flocks for their bishops. Then the clericalist contagion spreads to them and they squeeze some out for themselves. The example comes from the top. Many freshly-baptised, post-Soviet clergy (and then by imitation ROCOR bishops) fell into the money-loving, ‘Wild East’ Capitalism of the 1990s and got stuck there. (There are also the sexual scandals with bishops, but that is another story).

How is all this possible? Only when the majority of ‘baptised Orthodox’ in both countries long ago renounced Christ and are only nominally Orthodox Christians, if Orthodox Christians at all. (As they say, ‘many are Orthodox, but few are Christians’). And only when a majority have patriots and not the politicians, who prefer hundreds of billions of dollars, euros and pounds and huge quantities of lethal Western arms to peace. In reality, most in both countries, baptised but never instructed (despite Christ’s commandment in Matt. 28.20), are pagans who have not accepted Christ, Who told us to love one another. And most want to dominate one another as imperialists, again contrary to Christ, Who told us to serve one another. How do this paganism and imperialism manifest themselves in the Church?

Paganism

The paganism of both peoples can be seen in their superstitiousness, the use of witchcraft and the evil eye, which have always been very widespread in all the Slav (as also in Catholic Southern European) lands. This comes from the underlying paganism, which has never been completely defeated by the Church, as is witnessed to by accounts both in the nineteenth century and in Soviet times, and which then revived enormously in the spiritual vacuum after the ideological collapse of the USSR, with a fascination for ‘extrasenses’, that is, for occultists, magicians, wizards and gurus and their weird, exploitative sects for the naïve and disoriented, who felt lost after the Soviet fall. This paganism is clear in the utter confusion between the spiritual and inward, that is primary, and the material and outward, that is secondary.

This can be seen, for example, in the aggressive preference for secondary Church rituals and customs of dress over kindness and tolerance for one another, in a belief in magic, ‘miracles’, ‘prophecies’ and ‘elders’, rather than in the effort to overcome our sinful, fallen nature. Again, the outward and bodily prevail over the inward and spiritual. And the spiritual is what is required in order to acquire Divine grace. For these pagans, everything is automatic, as in magic – which the devil can indeed provide, if people do not exercise their own will and sell themselves to his occultist magicians and witches. In the real world, nothing comes automatically, including the grace of eucharistic communion. And acquiring grace, as St Seraphim of Sarov said, is the aim of our lives, needs effort – the meaning of the word ‘ascetic’.

This superficiality was also manifest in the Russian Emigration, where One Church split into three warring, spiteful and hateful sectarian groups, not because of any difference in doctrines and beliefs, but because of politics. Love one another, said Christ, but the main practice of each group appeared to be, Hate one another. Similarly, as is well-known, many Russian churches, run by careerists who are devoid of pastoral activity and interest, appear to have a bigoted and ignorant woman or two at their entrance, who enjoy shouting at visitors and insulting them because they have committed some ritual error or are not dressed according to the taste of the insulters. Poorly-trained priests or laity who make others cry through their insults appear to be the anti-pastoral norm in certain churches, especially at confession and during sermons.

In turn, superstition, the almost fanatical attachment to mere outward rites, grew into a love for schism. It is deeply significant that the main, State-enforced schism in Russian Church history is called ‘Old Ritualism’. There was never any difference in doctrine between the Old Ritualists and the majority, who may be called ‘New Ritualists’, all was about ritual differences, all about the arrangement of the fingers in making the sign of the cross. Superstition bred obscurantism, the spiritual disease of pharisaically and joyfully condemning and denouncing others, and the obsession with finding and identifying ‘heresies’ and ‘schisms’, words hatefully and lovingly bandied about in Russian as the ultimate insult. In the land of record numbers of abortions and divorce, all agree on the Creed, but as for someone who differs in ritual…

Here is the origin of the cult of holy water among some Russian Orthodox. Clearly, this relates back to Slavic paganism. Now there is a great need for holy water, to be baptised in it, to drink it and to sprinkle it, but the concept that a child will be magically protected from colds by it, or that you can virtually trample on other people in church in order to get some at the Feast of Theophany or at water-blessing services of intercession after the Liturgy, having ignored confession and communion, is not Christian. And the concept that the use of holy water will magically heal or transform everything is pagan. I remember being asked if I could bless a Russian brothel. I refused. Again, others have been asked to bless the palaces and limousines of Slav oligarchs, who obtained their money over the dead bodies of others. I would refuse.

It has often been said that if the Russian Revolution took place, it was because of the virtual clerical prohibition before it to take communion more than once a year, a practice long conserved by ROCOR, as I only too well remember. In other words, church practice had become a ritual of private services, memorials or intercessions, rather than the common act of taking communion and so becoming a community. The secondary and outward had taken over from the primary and inward. Most Russian town churches today appear to be railway stations, people coming and going, staying for a few minutes to light a candle, or coming only after communion for some private service they have ordered. There are in fact very few parishes in Russia, in the correct sense of communities. Indeed, they are almost unknown.

Imperialism

Like Rome and then Constantinople (the ‘Second Rome’), Russia became an Empire and so was in its turn called the ‘Third Rome’. In other words, all three of these important historical Christian centres were tainted by one and the same Imperialism. The worst case was Rome, which actually developed a systematic, theologically justified and institutionalised structure of centralised power, called Papism, which actually changed the Creed, in order to vindicate its desire to control the whole world. According to this, a mere human-being, the Pope of Rome is the Vicar (Replacement) of Christ, the Head of the Church, the Holy Spirit proceeds from Him, and he is therefore infallible. All this is logical, if you accept a human-being as the replacement for Christ. But that leads to humanist idolatry, as the God-man is replaced by a mere man.

However, if you think that this article is some anti-Roman Catholic polemic, you are mistaken. The Second and Third Romes have exactly the same Imperialism as the First Rome, even if they have not (yet) justified it theologically. Thus, there are virulent Greek nationalists who will tell you in all seriousness (!) that nobody can be Orthodox, if they are not in communion with their favourite Turkish citizen, their Greek ethnarch (‘the first without equals’, as some heretically call him), the Patriarch of Constantinople (by the way, that has not existed for 573 years, it is called Istanbul). However, there are Russian imperialists/nationalists who will tell you that anyone who does not commemorate the Russian ethnarch, the Patriarch of Moscow (his present title), in services is a schismatic. (That favourite Russian word again!)

The Greek case is very strange, since many Patriarchs of Constantinople were heretics, especially in the first ten centuries, until the fall of the City in 1453, though more recently too. So we have to be in communion with a heretic in order to be an Orthodox Christian?! What about being in communion with Christ? As for the equally strange Russian case, it is a result of superstition and in turn of nationalist ignorance. The average baptised Russian Orthodox has no idea that there are 16 Orthodox Churches and that only one of them, the Russian, commemorates its Patriarch or main bishop in the litanies in services. What about commemorating Christ? Does this mean then that the Russian Orthodox Church is the only true Church, as the Old Ritualists claim, and all others are schismatics? (That favourite Russian word again!)

Moreover, the Russian Church had itself to grant independence (autocephaly) to three of the 15 other Local Churches, the Polish, the Czechoslovak and the American – and therefore they do not commemorate the Russian Patriarch. And parts of the Russian Church outside the Russian Federation do not commemorate the Patriarch (as in France), or are not allowed to do so, by law, (as in the Ukraine and Latvia). Indeed, the Russian Patriarch is banned from even visiting such countries. The imperialist ignorance of many Russian Orthodox that there is a much older Orthodox world that exists outside Russia is astounding. Yes, diversity exists. The Church is like a bouquet of 16 flowers, all flowers, but all different. Accept the real Church, instead of living in a narrow nationalist ghetto, ignorant of history and reality.

Here we come to the essence of the ecclesial problem of both Greeks and Russians. Both have reduced the Church to a Greek or Russian Imperialist/Nationalist Church, they have put Caesar above Christ. This explains in the Russian case the aggressiveness, ignorance and even hatred towards Non-Russians, as displayed by Russians who were adults before the Revolution (I knew plenty of them), let alone by those after the process of Sovietisation. That Imperialisation of the local mentality has led to aggressive militarism, as can be seen in the recently-built Military Cathedral near Moscow, as can be seen in the behaviour of preachers such as Fr Andrey Tkachov, who appear to think, like other anti-pastors, Russian bishops and priests, that insulting Orthodox people is normal. How many women did you make cry today?

Some Russians were hated even before the Revolution, most notably in Poland, the Ukraine, Georgia and the Baltics, wherever people had been oppressed by centralised Russian nationalism and militarism. Nothing that happened after 1917 did anything to change that – indeed, Sovietisation made it all much worse. ‘We have the right to do anything we want, and local people must use our language in order to live’, they said, talking exactly like brash American Imperialists from ROCOR. Here is why the Estonian Kaja Kallas, the Pole Donald Tusk, the Moldovan Maya Sandu, the Ukrainian Yuliya Timoshenko and many a Georgian, came to hate Russians. And they found plenty of hypocritical and equally Imperialist Westerners, very jealous of Russia and greedy to steal its resources, to fund them for purely selfish reasons.

Towards the Restoration of Orthodoxy in the East Slav Lands

As the end of the Ukrainian tragedy and the Ukraine in its Soviet form draws near and it is carved up between the different countries, from which parts of it were taken, what is the future for the ‘Moscow Patriarchate’? For this is still the Soviet-invented name for the Russian Orthodox Church. Clearly, both names are incorrect in the sense that a Patriarchate in Moscow and a Russian Orthodox Church can only be relevant to the territory of the Russian Federation. Therefore, it has to stop imperialistically clinging on to territories outside the Russian Federation. Let the Baltics, Moldova, Belarus and the future Ukraine, whatever its actual national borders and future name (Kievska Rus?) will be, have their independence, just as the Orthodox in Georgia, Poland, Czechoslovakia and America had theirs generations before them.

Many Russians, and not only Russians, speak of Russia, Belarus and the Ukraine as a trinity. Indeed, they are, as all are East Slav nations, all speak similar, if not the same, languages, all are Orthodox by culture and history, all are closely related, with intermarriage normal. Now, the Holy Trinity is the model of Unity in Diversity, three Separate Persons in One ‘Undivided and Consubstantial Trinity’ in Church language. Is it not time for the three peoples and countries to have their own independent Churches, a trinity of Churches of Unity in Diversity, as is our model? Let each of them co-exist as friends, not as enemies, loving one another and intermarrying with one another, and not hating and warring against one another. Then we will see that they are really, and not merely nominally, Orthodox Christians.

For the moment, our hope is that all will start referring to the common spiritual heritage of the Russian Orthodox Church, that is, to the saints of all, perhaps especially to the New Martyrs and Confessors. The problem is that at present many only pay lip-service to the latter. The lives of the tens of thousands of those canonised so far are virtually unknown. Significantly, the baptised Orthodox masses still often prefer Stalin to his victims. The reason for this is that in their heads they belong to the Russian Nationalist and Imperialist Church, not to the Russian Orthodox Church. And this concerns not only many people, but also many clergy. The sad fact is that there has not yet been repentance for the past. And that is why they are still killing one another, idolising Lenin and Stalin, and massively aborting, divorcing and swearing.

Afterword: The King is Coming

Those who find this story sad or are scandalised by these truths should take consolation, recalling that the 16 Local Orthodox Churches number nearly 200 million. We, the masses of honest clergy and people, have suffered from or been misled by just a few thousand, who have like bandits seized and cling onto power and riches and war. Now when, as the proverb says, the fish rots from the head, then the head will be replaced by those rejected and placed at the bottom. Those despised, neglected, abandoned and hated at the bottom will replace the head. For when the King comes, and He is coming, the ‘princes of the Church’ will be swept away like so much chaff. This is not our doing, it is the doing of the Lord and it is marvellous in our eyes, for the stone that the builders rejected will become the head of the corner.

In the words of the Tsar’s Archbishop, St John of Shanghai and Western Europe, on the 950th Anniversary of the Baptism of Rus:

The reality of Holy Rus is not a delusion or a phantom, but true. The prayer of the saints does not cease to rise up to heaven, those who shone forth in the Russian Lands pray for them now at the throne of God. But not only in heaven, but also here, on our sinful earth Holy Rus continues to exist. The power of those who fight against God has enslaved, but not destroyed Her. The Council of the ungodly who have dominion over the Russian people is alien to them, for it has nothing in common with the essence of Russia.

St John of Shanghai and Western Europe, on the 950th Anniversary of the Baptism of Rus

 

 

The Restructuring of Europe

Foreword: Reason Replaced by Ideology

The elite of the contemporary Western world seems to be in the grip of insanity. Its political and media elite, paid by arms dealers, is irrational. This irrationality is the result of its unrealistic ideology driven by hubris, the same hubris which lay behind the insane and suicidal German invasion of Russia in 1941. This insane wishful thinking states: ‘We must destroy ourselves by rejecting cheap Russian energy and food because Russians are subhuman’.

The roots of this ideology are in the arrogant delusion or fairy tale ‘narrative’ that the West is superior to ‘the Rest’, that Western culture is better than all others. This came from the superior military technology that the West used to possess. This military advance led hypocritical European settlers to call Slavs, Muslims, Native Americans, Africans, Asians and Aborigenes ‘savages’ and genocide them. Now even its military superiority is over, as we can see in Iran.

Four Great Powers?

According to IMF figures, the Gross Domestic Product of China by PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) is about $44 trillion, of the USA some $32 trillion (without finance, insurance and real estate, in reality probably about $20 trillion), of India nearly $19 trillion and of Russia $8 trillion (its vastly underestimated military production means that it is probably about $10 trillion in reality). These are the four largest economies in the world, the Four Powers.

In today’s world reality, of these Four Powers, the three former Regional Powers, China, Russia and India, have become or, in the case of the narrowly nationalist India, whose anti-Muslim nationalism is hindering it, is becoming, Great Powers. And one Great Power, the USA, is fast becoming a Regional Power. This follows its successive routs in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and the Ukraine, the results of its irrational and hateful ideology of superiority.

As a result, the tribute-paying (that is, tariff-paying) Western European vassals and court jesters of the American King Donald are becoming even more irrelevant than their master. As we can see from the collapse of the much-divided NATO and planned US occupation of the last large European colony, Greenland. If Western Europe is to survive, its leaders will have to reverse their ideology and to depend on Russia for energy and food and on China for goods.

The radical contraction of the influence of Western Europe, delusional in its wishful thinking, and the end of NATO will also mean the long-awaited end of the much-hated EU. The whole south-eastern quarter of Western Europe, centred on the largely Orthodox Carpathians and Balkans, will be connected to the Chinese economy by rail. The impoverished Baltics may follow to embrace China, and after them south-western Europe – Spain, Portugal and Italy.

The Borders of European Countries Redrawn: The Ukraine

However, none of this can happen until Western Europe’s old imperialist and racist elites, who hate Russia, China and all the ‘savages’ in the ‘jungle’ (they consider that they alone are in the ‘garden’), have collapsed in coming elections or in civil unrest. The First World War ended in injustices, which caused the Second, which also ended in injustices. As a result of those injustices, we now face the Third Recasting of Europe, which still seeks justice.

Firstly, the Soviet-invented Ukraine is over. The tyranny of Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev, supported by the West, will end. The Ukraine resembles tiny Wales, in the sense that 83% speak Russian as their first language and only 17% speak Ukrainian as their first language and have some limited Russian. And this is about the same as the proportions of those who speak English and Welsh in Wales, where only 17% speak Welsh better than English.

The war in the Ukraine is at last ending after Putin’s long years of diplomatic dithering. We suggest that the nine provinces of Novorossija may return to Russia, and, in a deNATOised (= deNAZIfied) and demilitarised form, the province of Chernivtsy may return to Romania, Zakarpattia may return to Slovakia and Hungary, and the three provinces of Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk and the western halves of Volyn and Ternopil as far as Pochaev may return to Poland.

The remaining eleven provinces, 40% of the old Soviet Ukraine, the real historical Ukraine in the centre, could retake their historical name of Kievska Rus, resembling a Southern Belarus, also landlocked, again as demilitarised zones. In return, the main beneficiary of land transfers, Poland, could grant a narrow land corridor to Kaliningrad. As for the Russian parts of Moldova like Transnistria and Gagauzia, they could by referendum be ceded to Russia.

In EU Europe

The three Baltic States are collapsing economically and therefore demographically. After the fall of the USSR, the Germans bought out and then closed the Baltic factories and their young people were forced to emigrate to live as wage-slaves in Western Europe. The Baltic elites must stop attacking Russia and grant their Russian minorities their human rights, or else be occupied, the American-appointed, poke-the-bear, puppet elites removed.

Then there are the massive injustices of ex-Yugoslavia. A whole set of non-viable countries were invented by the divide and rule US: Kosovo, Montenegro, Bosnia, Macedonia. Parts of Serbia were stolen by Croatia. Albania remains the poorest and most crime-ridden country in Europe. These all survive with a permanent NATO and UN presence, which is what prevents justice being done. Here there must be confederative resolutions with justice for all.

In Western Europe, there are four obvious cases of countries which have long sought independence. These are (a Reunited) Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England, all at last to be freed of London-based British tyranny. The end of an oppressive and artificial union would mean freedom at last for all the peoples involved. No doubt, given their common history of oppression, they could co-operate together in some loose Confederation of Four Sovereign Nations.

There is also the case of Catalonia, long oppressed by Madrid centralism. However, there are also questions about the artificial, British-invented, post-Waterloo union of Belgium (in fact, the Netherlands, France and a small part of Germany), about a still not denazified West Germany (only East Germany was denazified), which perhaps should go from a Federation into a Confederation, a small part of Austria that is Italian and parts of Slovakia that are Hungarian.

The Restructuring of the Church: Twenty Local Churches?

Kievska Rus should receive autocephaly because few there will ever tolerate hearing the hated Russian Patriarch’s name at services. They will boycott any Russian churches there. If Kievska Rus is granted autocephaly, then Belarus should receive autocephaly too. The three Baltic States and Finland could also form an autocephalous Baltic Orthodox Church. This would mean three new Local Autocephalous Churches, their number going from sixteen to nineteen.

The Romanian Orthodox Church, the Polish Orthodox Church and the Orthodox Church of the Czechs and Slovaks would have to take responsibility for the Orthodox in the parts of the Ukraine which returned to them. Carpatho-Russians in eastern Slovakia would be greatly reinforced. Any Orthodox who live in the small part of Zakarpattia, which would return from the old Soviet Ukraine to Hungary, could join the Orthodox Diocese in Hungary.

In the Non-Slav world, we think that the administration of the Patriarchate of Constantinople should move to Northern Greece, perhaps to the town of Ouranoupolis, ‘the City of Heaven’, at the foot of Mt Athos, from which it could at last obtain a monastic episcopate. After nearly 200 years the Church of Greece could return to it. And the Patriarchate of Alexandria should be decolonised by Greeks and Russians and become a black African Patriarchate.

As regards the new Moldova, in an ideal world the Russian and Romanian Patriarchs would together grant its Church autocephaly. In return, Western Europe, already with nearly fifty bishops, could at last receive a new Local Church, to be led by the majority Romanian Church, despite Greeks and some Russians wishing to remain in irrelevant national ghettos, whose nationalism puts them outside Church unity. Then there would be twenty Local Churches.

Afterword: Ecclesioclasm – The Sin Against the Holy Spirit

Certain members of the elite of the Orthodox world are in the grip of insanity, that is, of irrationality. This is the result of their passions for power, money and lust. We say certain members, because only the secularists are in the grip of this insanity, which is the sin of Infallibility, common among secular-minded people, because they have no humility. They say: ‘We do not care for Christ, we only care for our careers, honour, ambition, villas, cars and carnal lusts’.

These are the hireling clerics, the wolves in shepherd’s clothing, who are filioquists, as they consider that they are the source of the Holy Spirit. This is the sin against the Holy Spirit. They place themselves above the canons as despots, who recognise no laws, certainly not the law of Love. They are seized by schismatic anti-Conciliarity. This is the heresy of ‘Pneumatomachy’, of the rejection of the Holy Spirit, breaking the Church by their ‘Ecclesioclasm’.

 

 

 

Q and A Spring 2026

We do not want to go to Rome, Constantinople or Moscow, we want to go to Heaven! We want Archpastors, not Archpoliticians!

The Nature of the Church and its Governance

Q: With the schism between Greeks and Russians, some say that the Orthodox Church does not exist. What would you say?

A: Of course, it does not exist and never has done. But this is nothing to do with the current political dispute, created by the CIA. The words ‘the Orthodox Church’ are abstract, but the principle of the Church is concrete, it is the Incarnation. The Church it is not an abstract idea, as in the minds of Protestants, it is real in places. Concretely, we think of the real Local Orthodox Churches, of Orthodox Christianity, of the Orthodox Faith. Such was the situation in the New Testament, with the Local Churches in Corinth, Ephesus, Colossae, Philippi, Galatia, Thessaloniki, Rome. Today there are sixteen Local Churches, double the number 150 years ago. In 150 years’ time, that number may well double again to 32 Local Churches, in any case reaching at least 24. What is One and creates Unity is the Orthodox Faith, shared by all the Local Churches.

Q: Can the Church be corrupt?

A: If you see ‘The Church’ as a group of upper middle-class Anglican bishops appointed by an atheist or Hindu Prime Minister, as I think you do, then it is corrupt. However, that is not the Church, that is a mere human organisation, founded by a corrupt and evil King out of lust and some of whose properties were ‘privatised’ and handed out to his cronies, and which is run by accountants. In reality, the Church is the Body of Christ (in the words of the Apostle Paul), and it is run by the Holy Spirit. This can be seen clearly in the case of the Church in heaven.

As for the Church on earth, I think it can be likened to a huge Ship, carrying to Paradise those who sail in it, the captain, the navigator, the senior officers, mechanics, cooks, waiters, cleaners, plumbers, doctors, as well as the very many passengers, who are baptised. Some of these help the crew greatly, some do not, in fact they hinder. Sometimes some passengers decide to leave the Ship on lifeboats, which get lost or sink, others follow in the wake for a time and some from them get back on. Some passengers jump off, others come in new boats and climb on board. If the latest captain is bad, so what? Sooner or later the Owner of the Ship will come and change course, appointing a new captain. In the end, all are only passengers, who follow the Owner.

Q: Is the Church hierarchical or congregational?

A: If you are Roman Catholic, especially a traditionalist, then it is hierarchical. If you are Protestant, then it is congregational. If you are a normal Orthodox Christian, it is both. However, if you are some sort of old calendarist / ROCOR convert and you dream of dressing in clerical or monastic garments and hats and having a long beard or, if a woman, of dressing as a nun, then it is hierarchical. And if you are a liberal modernist, then it is congregational and you ignore and despise bishops.

Q: What happens in a Church if there is a shortage of suitable candidates for the episcopate?

A: We recently had the visit of a Romanian bishop. He told us how he and the Metropolitan are the only bishops in the Metropolia of Iasi of over 1,200 parishes. The Metropolia is in fact run by 15 deans, married priests. This system of delegation works very well. And that is in a Local Church which has a lot of active monasteries.

I remember in Moscow in 2007 being told that the Russian Church had 2,000 candidates to be bishops. This was quite untrue. They had in reality 2,000 single men who had an interest in a career in the Church. In fact, over 300 of the 2,000 became bishops. The results have been catastrophic and many have already had to be defrocked; many others will be. Single men with an interest in the Church do not make bishops! When will this common sense fact be understood in Moscow and Constantinople?

If there is a shortage of good bishops, then delegate! Thus, in the Russian Church exhausted bishops rush around at the end of Lent and in Holy Week doing long unction services, whereas in the Romanian Church priests can do unction services every month, if they wish. Such things are delegated. Only ordinations are not delegated.

Q: What sorts of bishop are there in your experience?

A: There are the real bishops, who are shepherds and love their flock, who loves them: St Spyridon, St Nicholas, St Nectarios, St John of Shanghai. The rest are lovers of themselves – administrators, narcissists, intellectuals, careerists, thieves, sadists, bullies, sexually disturbed homosexuals, pedophiles and psychopaths.

Q: What is more important, frequent confession or frequent communion?

A: Both. There should be frequent communion and confession, together with frequent prayer, the prayer of the heart and prayer from the prayerbook. This is different from the heterodox world, which has only frequent communion.

Q: Ever since the incidents in Amsterdam in 2022, the Russian Church has been known as ‘the Persecuting Church’ and lost most of its credit. How did a Persecuted Church become a Persecuting Church?

A: Persecution certainly was not present until 2008, when Patriarch Alexis was there. Then tens of millions of newly baptised and sometimes very zealous people and clergy worked enthusiastically hand in hand to rebuild the Church. The change came afterwards, with the spirit of centralisation (an old Soviet hangover), Papalisation (all those visits to the Vatican were a sign of this), bureaucratisation (the paperwork which was suddenly demanded by the Centre and detested by the priests), the military-style clericalisation (literal uniformity in dress, but also in political opinions), the closeness to the State and the Armed Forces, ‘blessing’ tanks, bombs and guns, and the insistence on rigid discipline, ritualisation and the use of archaic and little understood Slavonic.

All I can say is that the Persecuting Church developed in a process between 2008 and 2022. Let us take the mid-point of 2015 as a symbolic date for its appearance. And the essential reason for all this is that by then State politics, raison d’etat, had been put above pastoral love and above the support for Orthodox teaching. Schism followed. Schism always follows politics, that is why we speak of party (part) politics.

Q: Has your parish ever produced a monk?

A: Yes, we had one. However, he went to a monastery in the USA, where he was ‘touched up’ by a monk. He fled and came to complain to the bishop here, who had already turned down the offer of a free monastery, which had involved me in a lot of hard, but wasted, work. That bishop in turn made homosexual advances to the monk. The result was that the monk fled from him too. Later, others fled.

Q: Where do you think ROCOR is heading today?

A: In 2007 it had the opportunity of bringing its liturgical and ascetic heritage to help in renewing the life of the ex-Soviet Russian Church and the Local Churches in the Diaspora, as the late Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware) insightfully urged. Instead of making a positive contribution, however, ROCOR gradually began developing into a negative exclusive sect and cult, especially after 2017.

Having only a very small ethnic flock, it began recruiting crazies. The rest, as they say, is history. Therefore, today its American Synod is already in schism from most Local Churches, for which it has expressed hatred, not love. After its recent meeting at its former US church in Munich, donated to it by the CIA, I fear it may turn altogether into a Californian homosexual and pedophile sect. See: https://www.bing.com/search?q=pokrovtruth+fr+seraphim&FORM=PVSBDF&PC=PV02

The Undivided World and the Zionist World

Q: How did the Western world come to dominate the rest of the world until quite recently?

A: This is the question raised, but only vaguely answered, by the great Roman Catholic cultural historian and philosopher, Christopher Dawson (+ 1970), the English Berdyayev, in such books as Religion and the Rise of Western Culture. Here he writes that Western supremacy comes from a restless spirit, a spiritual energy, ‘a spirit that strives to change the world’. In Orthodoxy, we know what that spirit is; as a Catholic, he did not.

Before the eleventh century there was a multipolar world, as the Pentarchy of five Patriarchates was, which was not dominated by any one centre. We can see this in the life of the saintly English King Alfred the Great, who visited Europe, sent alms to Jerusalem, which he never, quite unthinkably, tried to seize from the Muslims. He also sent alms to India and despatched a mission to explore the countries around the White Sea.

Multipolarity is a sign of diversity and of unity in diversity, the sign of the Holy Trinity. The late historian Robert Moore describes in detail how from the early eleventh century on, any diversity was persecuted, in his The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Authority and Deviance in Western Europe, 950–1250.

Multipolarity was gradually destroyed by what we can call Zionism or Universalism. The First West, the West of the first millennium, was pre-Zionist, that is, diverse. The symbol and reality of this Zionism is the filioque. That heresy, adopted in the late eighth century as an imperial ideology in what is now western Germany and spread slowly until it was promulgated in Rome in 1014, is anti-Trinitarian. It dePersonalises the Trinity, making the Father and the Son into One and the Holy Spirit the mere link between them (as portrayed in many a heretical icon). This is why the Church insists on the Holy Trinity.

To the Vatican it was rather irrelevant, as the Unitarian Head of their ‘Church’ is the Pope of Rome, whom all must obey. Protestant Unitarians are like freemasons, who believe in One Architect-God. Thus, Western Europe moved away from the ascetic and grace-filled towards the legal and the moral, as seen, for instance, in Roman Catholic ‘days of obligation’ and Protestant puritanism.

Q: What is Zionism, in theological terms?

A: Zionism means universalism that is, globalism, the movement towards One World Dictatorship, homogeneity, unity without diversity, overseen by oligarchs. These think they are infallible, superior to those whom they consider to be lesser human-beings. Trotskyism is a classic example. Today’s extraterrestrial (or is that demonic?) ‘Muskism’ is another. Zionism can only exist outside the Holy Trinity, which is the principle of unity in diversity.

Here it is important to state that Zionism is by no means necessarily Jewish. By far the majority of Zionists are not Jews. Indeed, a great many Jews are anti-Zionists. For example, the last Non-Zionist US presidents were Eisenhower and Kennedy, that is, over sixty years ago. Since then, all US presidents have been Zionists, whether Democrat or Republican, but none has been a Jew. One of the greatest British Zionists was the psychopathic Churchill – he had no Jewish blood, despite what absurd conspiracy theories claim. His ancestor John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough, was also a Zionist. Other British Zionists include Cromwell, Rhodes, Thatcher and Blair, among many others.

Moreover, even among Jewish Zionists, there is huge variety of individuals, of left and right and nothing at all, for example, Rothschild and Marx, Trotsky and Zuckerberg, Freud and Spielberg, Sarkozy and Zelensky, in the UK Maxwell, Mandelson, Starmer (by his wife), Straw, the Milibands and Polanski, Milei in Argentina, or in the USA, Epstein, Witkoff, Kushner and Cohen (Trump’s mentor and friends).

Some homosexual politicians are also Zionists, for example, Mandelson (and many other Blairites such as N. Brown and Streeting), Lord Ali, the Dutch Rutte, several in the US-run Baltic States, and the US Bessent, Graham and many others.

Some pedophiles are also Zionists and are very active in the media, for example in the gagging-ordered, heavily censored (‘editorially controlled’) BBC. This perhaps should be called the ABCC (the Anti-British Broadcasting Corporation), as it appears to be controlled by Zionist journalists and pedophiles too numerous to name here, for Savile, Harris and Edwards are only the tip of the iceberg.

Today parts of the USA appear to be ruled by Zionist oligarchs and perverts, the so-called Epstein class, the majority of whom are not Jewish, but who are globalists. They run the banks, the oil corporations, Silicon Valley, the nuclear-armed military, Wall Street, Hollywood, the PR industry, the legacy media, the social media and pseudo-academia. They operate by sanctions and tariffs, instead of by encouragement and development. To drain the US swamp and not to be sucked into it must be very difficult.

Contemporary Wars

Q: Would you say that the wars in the Ukraine and Iran form one single World War?

A: Yes, but it must be understood that this World War is not only a military War and that it began decades ago. Indeed, for 35 years, since 1991, the West has been embarked on a war against the world, which has been composed of a series of campaigns to promote a ‘forever’ war in several phases, both military and social. This began in Iraq and Serbia, spread to Afghanistan, created the chaos in Libya and Syria, included the campaign against the anti-globalist Brexit, the social engineering attempts to enforce the manmade climate change and net zero myths and to poison the weak and elderly with manmade covid, and then the new phases of this one single war, in the Ukraine and Iran.

Is Today’s Rome Washington or Moscow?

Q: The US Secretary for War, Hegseth, has on his chest a tattoo in the form of a red cross, surrounded by four smaller crosses. It looks Orthodox. Is it?

A: No. This US Secretary for War wears the crusader cross. He has, after all, like the crusaders, tried to destroyed to invade West Asia and Eastern Europe. These crusades have since 1096 become worldwide. Thus, President Bush also launched a ‘crusade’ against Iraq, as he publicly declared, and that is why the current US Secretary of War wears a crusader cross tattoo. He follows a very long history.

It is all logical. Just as the Papacy used excommunications and indulgences, so his successors, the US President in his Capitol and the EU Commissars, use sanctions and tariffs. However, those ‘infallible’ and ‘exceptional’ Fascist crusaders, who are above the law, not only cannot win in the Ukraine against a Superpower like Russia, they cannot even win against a regional power like Iran. Washington is not Rome.

Q: Is Moscow the Third Rome?

A: When Archbishop Nikitas was at last appointed Archbishop of the Greek Thyateira Archdiocese in Great Britain in 2019, in order to save a Greek ethnic group from rapidly dying out, he gave a radio interview to the Spectator. In this he stated that the Moscow the Third Rome idea is absurd, that there is no Third Rome, only a First and Second Rome! In other words, he was only a mouthpiece for Phanariot ideology. As one very senior and outspoken (in private) Greek cleric from the Patriarchate of Constantinople said to me of his own Patriarch last year: ‘We are waiting for the toilet to flush’. His words, not mine.

Rome, First, Second or Third, are all an absurd and fatal distraction, worse still, a delusion and those who believe in it are delusional, whether in Washington or Moscow. We want Jerusalem, not Rome. Romes are the downfall of the Church. We do not want to go to some Rome, we want to go to Heaven. We want Archpastors, not Archpoliticians. The so-called First, Second and Third Romes are irrelevant in Church life, as they all fell, in 1054, 1453 and 1917 respectively. Why keep harping on about the fallen and disappeared past? Neither Moscow, nor Constantinople, nor Rome are of any importance or help now, as we face, potentially, the end of the world.

Hatred of Russia

Q: Why do so many politicians hate Russia, but not other Orthodox countries like Romania, Greece, Bulgaria? King Charles, for example, loves Romania, and owns properties there, tourists love Greece, yet many hate Russia.

A: The elite of the Western world hates Russia and not other Orthodox countries, because the latter are small, poor and weak, unlike Russia, which is vast, rich and powerful. In other words, it is all about jealousy and greed for resources.

The British elite especially hates Russia, because in October 1917 Russian-language, Marxist ideologues overthrew the masonic MI6 regime imposed on Russia by the British between December 1916 and October 1917. This is why they made up the Litvinenko, Salisbury and now El Money cases as cheap propaganda. In the same way, the American elite hates Cuba and Iran, because they are the only ones who successfully overthrew CIA-imposed regimes.

As regards British Russophobia, see in greater detail: The Genesis of Russophobia in Great Britain from 1815 to 1841: A Study of the Interaction of Policy and Opinion by John Howes Gleason, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, London Oxford University Press 1950.

President Putin

Q: President Putin seems to be very cold. Do you think he is?

A: I have only been able to observe him one in real life, in 2007, but I think his apparent coldness is because he is probably autistic, that is, he is someone who is brilliant at systems, but perhaps lacks people skills. He is an ultra-cautious diplomat and lawyer, who does everything by the book. He has an excellent memory and is brilliant at chess and German, but he presents a very blurred image of Russia.

Nobody quite knows where he stands. He used to be a devout Westerner, a protégé of Yeltsin, who wanted to join NATO. He has acknowledged publicly his many mistakes of naivety after 2014. Many blame him for the Ukrainian situation and not acting then, which would have been far less destructive of life and property. His present indecisive diplomacy is frustrating to some and makes him seem weak and naïve. As a result, he has led Russia into full-blown nationalism. Neither his previous Westernism, nor his present nationalism are Orthodox. We are still obliged to wait for Russia to move out of both these deviations, Westernism and nationalism, towards Christ.

Q: Who could replace Putin in this year’s Russian elections?

A: The elections in Russia next September are Parliamentary elections, not Presidential. President Putin will stay. But the influence of the former Westerner and now strong Russian nationalist Medvedev may become a lot stronger. Rightly or wrongly, he is seen as strong and decisive. Others have unflattering views about him. We shall see.

Personal

Q: Do you hope to live a long life?

A: I hope so, as there is still so much to do, or so it seems to me, but what I hope is completely irrelevant. God decides. Perhaps tomorrow I will be gone! As Chaucer wrote: The life so short, the craft so long to learn.

 

 

I Had a Dream: Twelve Days that Would Shake the Orthodox World

Moscow, Wednesday 1st, The Ascension Thursday 2nd, and Friday 3rd June

After the Liturgy for the Leavetaking of Pascha and the resignation of the previous Patriarch, Metropolitan Pavel was elected Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox (ROC). The first act of the Patriarch and his Synod was to rename the Soviet-era ‘Moscow Patriarchate’ ‘the Patriarchate of New Jerusalem and All Russia’ and to move his administration to the New Jerusalem Monastery outside Moscow for deSovietisation. Then the Synod refrocked all who had been defrocked for political reasons by the old regime and cleansed the Church by defrocking ‘the princes of the Church’, placed there by the old regime. These were all the corrupt careerists, thieves and sadists, who had humiliated and persecuted faithful priests and people, the sexually disturbed narcissists, intellectuals, homosexuals, pedophiles and psychopaths who hated married priests, women and children.

After the Ascension Feast Liturgy, Patriarch Pavel set up four new Autocephalous Local Churches. These new Churches were: the Kievska Rus Church (for the new Ukraine), the Belarussian Church, the Baltic Church (for Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania) and the Central Asian Church (for the five stans of Central Asia). Also the OCA (Orthodox Church in America), founded by Moscow, was renamed the NAOC (Northern American Orthodox Church). The ROC gave up its Northern American parishes to the NAOC, those in Oceania to the Patriarchate of Constantinople, those in South America and those in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean to the Patriarchate of Antioch, and all those in Western Europe and Hungary to the Patriarchate of Romania. They also told the rogue, schismatic ROCOR group that it had one year to follow or be excommunicated.

Finally, the Patriarch also transformed the Church’s Department of External Relations into the Department of Inter-Orthodox Relations. On Friday afternoon the new Patriarch left Moscow and proceeded with his delegation to Istanbul for reconciliation and the renewal of concelebration with the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the other Greek-speaking Churches.

Istanbul, Saturday 4th, Sunday 5th and Monday 6th June

After the resignation of the previous Patriarch, Bishop Petros was elected Patriarch of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. The first act of the Patriarch and his Synod was to cleanse the Church by defrocking ‘the princes of the Church’, placed there by the old regime. These were all the corrupt careerists, freemasons, thieves and sadists, who had humiliated and persecuted faithful priests and people, the sexually disturbed narcissists, intellectuals, homosexuals, pedophiles and psychopaths who hated married priests, women and children. Then Patriarch Petros and his Synod abandoned the fake ‘Church’ in the Ukraine, which had been known as the OCU, and told them to join the canonical Church. It then decided to recognise and concelebrate with the Patriarchate of New Jerusalem and all 20 Autocephalous Churches, including the four new ones.

Finally, all agreed to establish a new Autocephalous Church for Oceania, also giving its parishes in Northern America to the NAOC, giving up parishes in South America, and those in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, to the Patriarchate of Antioch, and those in Western Europe and in Hungary to the Patriarchate of Romania, where new Local Churches would be established.

Alexandria, Tuesday 7th and Wednesday 8th June

After the resignation of the previous Patriarch, Bishop Moses was elected Patriarch of the Patriarchate of Alexandria. Born in Uganda, he is the first black Patriarch of Africa. The first act of the Patriarch and his Synod was to cleanse the Church by refrocking those who had been defrocked for political reasons and defrocking ‘the princes of the Church’, placed there by the old regime. These were all the corrupt careerists, freemasons, thieves and sadists, who had humiliated and persecuted faithful priests and people, the sexually disturbed narcissists, intellectuals, homosexuals, pedophiles and psychopaths who hated married priests, women and children. He replaced all these with black African bishops. Then Patriarch Moses decided to move his administration to Nairobi, the Church keeping its ancient title as the Patriarchate of Alexandria and All Africa.

A number of Greek, Cypriot and Russian bishops were appointed to continue to serve in the Patriarchate as consultants. However, the Church is now dominated by African bishops, selected from the local clergy, who are spread out all over the African Continent. A plan has been drawn up to greatly expand their numbers, which is vital to the Africa-wide spread of the Church.

Cisinau, Thursday 9th and Friday 10th June

The Moldovan President greeted Patriarch Pavel of Moscow, Patriarch Daniel of Bucharest, their delegations, and both Metropolitans of the two still separate parts of the Moldovan Church. As nationwide democratic referenda had already been organised on self-determination, the results were announced. Apart from Transnistria in the far east, Gagauzia in the far south and a small area in the far north, which all transferred to Russia, over 80% of Moldovans had voted to join the Republic of Romania, their new region to be called the Autonomous Republic of Bessarabia. Following this decision, Orthodox in Bessarabia joined the Autonomous Bessarabian Metropolia under the Church of Romania. Patriarch Daniel accepted this and agreed to lead the formation of a Western European Orthodox Church and also a Local Church of Carpatho-Rus and Hungary.

In return, Patriarch Daniel ceded Romanian Orthodox parishes in Northern America to the NAOC, the few parishes in Latin America, and the few in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean to the two new Churches to be organised there by the Patriarchate of Antioch, and those in Oceania to the new Church to be organised there by the Patriarchate of Constantinople.

Bucharest, Saturday 11th and Sunday 12th June, the Great Council and Pentecost

At the new Cathedral of National Salvation in Bucharest, the largest Orthodox Cathedral in the world, all the leaders of the Local Churches held the Great Council of the whole Orthodox Church. There Patriarch Petros announced that his Patriarchal administrative centre would move to Thessaloniki, as the Church of Greece, centred in Athens, was merging with the Patriarchate after the uncanonical British-enforced separation of Greece some 200 years before. Thus, the episcopate of the old Church of Greece joined the renewed and cleansed Patriarchate of Constantinople and All Greece. The Church of Cyprus was represented by its new head, after the resignation in Nicosia of the old Archbishop of Cyprus. The Patriarch of Jerusalem announced a renewed episcopate, dominated by several Palestinian bishops and a Russian and a Romanian bishop.

In this way the Diptychs of the Church were renewed, listing 24 Local Churches in all, nine new. Thus, after the Great Council, on that great day of the Feast, the Feast of Pentecost, Sunday 12th June, all 24 Patriarchs, Metropolitans and Archbishops of the 24 Local Churches, old and new, concelebrated in the Cathedral for the first time: of Constantinople, New Rome and All Greece, of Alexandria and All Africa, of Antioch and All the East, of Jerusalem and All Palestine, of Georgia, of New Jerusalem and All Russia, of Serbia, of Romania and All Bessarabia, of Bulgaria, of Cyprus, of Albania, of Poland, of the Czech Lands and Slovakia, of Northern America, of Macedonia, of Kievska Rus, of Belarus, of the Baltics, of Central Asia, of Western Europe, of Carpatho-Rus and All Hungary, of South America, of Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, and of Oceania.

 

Half a Century in the Orthodox Church in Western Europe (2)

Fleeing the Extremes

The first Christian Emperor was called Constantine. The last Orthodox Emperor was called Nicholas. He was overthrown in the so-called 1917 Revolution, that is, in the palace coup of the aristocratic traitors to the Tsar, orchestrated by the British ruling class. As a result, all the Orthodox Churches, which the Tsar had protected when still in power lost their protector and were called either to martyrdom or else to confessordom. Once infiltrated, the Churches had to resist either the CIA, by confessordom, or else of the KGB, by martyrdom and their earlier equivalents. (Earlier they had had different names, but they were still engaged in the same intrigues). Our balancing act has meant avoiding both these extremes. In our context this has not yet meant becoming martyrs, but it has meant becoming confessors.

Combating the extremes has on the one hand meant avoiding and combating globalism, liberalism, modernism, freemasonry and Vatican-style perversions and, on the other hand, avoiding and combating sectarianism, phariseeism, hateful censoriousness, political ultra-conservatism and Old Ritualist style obscurantism. Both extremes are marked by anti-Christian ‘bishops’, who are in fact thieves, homosexuals and pedophiles. Thus, we fought against the influence of the liberal modernists in the Orthodox Churches in the 1970s and 1980s and then against the sectarian pharisees in the Orthodox Churches in the 1990s and 2000s, until Russian Church unity was achieved in 2007. This was a victory over both extremes, a miracle. But the devil does not like miracles and those who announce that God is Love.

The devil attacked the Greek Church of Constantinople through nationalist racism, called ‘phyletism’ in Greek. However, he attacked the Russian Church, replacing faith and piety with the negativity of nationalist politics, which led to State-orchestrated ritualism, rigid militarism with its blind obedience and harsh punishments, instead of integrity. Professional choirs assured that everything was provided and the people were made passive, without responsibility. From there it was only one step to anti-clericalism. As they say in Russian, ‘mnogo popov, malo batjushek’, ‘there are many fake priests, but few real ones’. And so in the Russian Church, persecution always comes from the bishops. Thus, the Russian Church isolated itself and fell out of communion and catholicity with the 15 other Local Orthodox Churches.

The USA

Thus, our 2007 victory was to give us only temporary respite, a decade of peace. The programme of Americanisation, or more precisely of Trumpisation, of the American Synod of the Russian Church, known as ROCOR, began in 2017. It sent out its US agents to the still ‘unreformed’ (= normal and traditional) parts of ROCOR in Western Europe and Australia to transform these too into ignorant and arrogant convert crazy zones, like themselves, who yearned to create a rigid and ritualistic sect. This all coincided, and not coincidentally, with President Trump’s first term of belligerent Americanism and also with the second phase of the infiltration of ROCOR by the CIA. The latter activated its sleeping agents in the American Synod and recruited new ones, sending them out worldwide to what is an ecclesiastical NGO.

The Age of Trump also coincided with the consequences of the earlier activities of the notorious Mossad agents, Maxwell and Epstein, who worked hand in hand for the greater glory of worldwide Zionism. Epstein was before his murder the model psychopath: charming, superficially brilliant, very manipulative, narcissistic, a pathological liar, with no sense of empathy, a ruthless pervert and a cynical egomaniac. His psychopathic spirit became the standard for the Age and for the CIA agents in question. So much for the psychopathic narcissists of the USA and its Epstein regime. What of the other half of the Western world, Europe and the UK? Here we have not narcissistic psychopathy, but the creeping power grab of centralising Sovietisation, the old megalomaniac temptations of power and money.

Europe and the UK

Immediately after the fall of the SU (Soviet Union) at the end of 1991, the EU (European Union) was founded. The demons behind the former Union had simply fled westwards to an easier prey, the new Gadarene swine of Western Europe. Russia was no longer attractive, as it cast off the yoke of compulsory atheism. Thus, with the Treaty of Maastricht, signed in 1992, the EU became a geopolitical project. Instead of a trading community, it had become the political wing of militaristic NATO. The creeping centralising Sovietisation and Epsteinisation of the EU, obvious in its practices, was also clear in its vocabulary. Thus, the (European) Council is the translation of ‘Soviet’, the EU Commissioners mirror Soviet Commissars, the oligarchy mirrors the nomenklatura and the ‘narrative’ mirrors ‘the Party line’. SU = EU.

As for England, it continued on its historic cycle. In 597 it was converted to Christ from that Old Rome, which still openly condemned universal pretensions. In 1066 it was converted to barbarianism from Norman France, sponsored by the ideology of the new schismatic and ‘universal’ Rome, which stifled Christ with the Pope and England with Britain. In 1535 it was converted to anti-sacramentalism from Luther’s neo-pagan Germany. In 2004 it was converted to imperial delusions from Nazi Ukraine and its orange revolution. The cycle is repeated every 469 years. Today, the British Establishment is trying to revive its long-lost past glory, which was not glory, but shame. This imperialism is repeated all through the ex-imperialist Western European ruling class, nostalgic for its delusions of greatness.

The Collapse of Kiev Creates Regime Changes in the USA, Europe and the UK

What the ruling elites in both the EU and the UK have not understood is that all unions break up. The Soviet Union, the USSR, broke up. So did Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and now the Ukraine, so will Belgium, the EU, the UK, and quite possibly the US. The Four Nations of Britain and a reunited Ireland can work together, not in a Union or a Federation (which is a half-way house from a Union, as is the semi-Soviet Russian Federation), but in a Sovereign Confederation, the Ionan Confederation, IONA, the ‘Isles of the North Atlantic’. England must yet depose the British monarchs who have ruled it for so long, invited by the merchant-oligarchs of the City of London from Germany to become an Imperial House, but the Imperial Age is long over and so are they. A new Sovereign England must restore its own English Royal House.

As for the EU and the UK, they are entirely dependent on the black hole of the Kiev regime. They have bet everything on that loser, playing at the casino wheel of geopolitics, without knowledge and understanding, but with a fanatical and blinding, ever-expanding ideology of European unionism. But every time that Europe falls to union, and it is always a fall, whether under Napoleon, or Hitler, or the EU, it then sets about attacking Russia. ‘Europe’ always attacks European Russia, because Russia does not conform to the morally and financially bankrupt ideological narrative of the Eurocommissars. This is why they do not want peace. War is their self-justification, as only war gives them a unifying purpose. However, the Russian Federation frustrates them immensely, for it is playing the long game against the Kiev regime.

Moscow’s methodical advance by attrition, metre by metre, keeping its losses very low, is because it is awaiting the political collapse of Kiev, which will precede its military collapse. (This was why Germany, Britain and France, as Japan had tried in 1904-5, first brought about Russian political collapse in 1917, since political collapse always precedes military collapse). When political Kiev collapses, its army will have nothing left to fight for. Then, Russia will take over most of the old Soviet Ukraine at little cost, allowing Poland, Romania, Hungary and perhaps Slovakia to take back the far western fragments of Stalin’s Ukraine which used to belong to them, as they wish. And then there will be regime change, not in Moscow, but, ironically, in peace-hating Washington, London, Berlin, Paris and wherever Kiev Fascism was supported.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Half a Century in the Orthodox Church in Western Europe (1)

Introduction: Nothing New Under the Sun

Apart from one year in Greece and several months in the Soviet Union, and then in Russia and the Ukraine, with brief visits to Orthodox in Moldova, Romania, Belarus, Czechia, Slovakia, Finland, Serbia and Bulgaria, I have spent 51 years as an Orthodox Christian in Western Europe, 41 of them as an Orthodox clergyman in Western Europe, in France, Portugal and England, but with liturgical celebrations in Belgium, Switzerland, Austria and Germany. My conclusions?

First of all, there is nothing new under the sun. This is because human nature does not change. Anyone who reads the Acts of the Apostles or the writings of the Church Fathers from the first centuries knows that all the difficulties and scandals of today have already occurred in the past. Of 80,000 Orthodox priests, I have perhaps met perhaps 1,000 and of the 1,000 Orthodox bishops, I have met about 100. I have never seen anything new compared to the past.

Seven Local Churches exist in the Western European Diaspora today: the Romanian, the Greek (Constantinople), the Russian (divided into three parts, one of which refuses to be in communion with another, so is in fact in schism, as well as the 100 new but independent parishes of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church), the Serbian, and then the three very small groups under the Churches of Antioch, Bulgaria and Georgia. Only the three first big Churches carry any weight in terms of the Diaspora Church as a whole.

The Three Big Churches in 1976

Fifty years ago, there were two Russian bishops in this country. As they were both Russian, they were, naturally, at daggers drawn and out of communion with one another. One was an anthroposophist (look it up), a great eccentric who believed in Atlantis. The other one was a notorious womaniser. A few English people were allowed to join the two Russian groups, usually provided that they learned some Russian. This was because both groups were rapidly dying out (1917, after which most of the still living but elderly Russians had come here, was nearly sixty years before 1976). Priests, very few of them lived outside London and they were also elderly, spent much of their time doing funerals.

Fifty years ago, the Patriarchate of Constantinople in this country was dominated by Greek Cypriots, whose lives were largely devoted to Hellenism. Most had arrived here between 1950 and 1974. A homosexual archbishop preferred to ordain his boyfriends and one of his vicar-bishops was a pedophile, who at that time got away with it. Of course, there was at least one bishop who was excellent and many very virtuous priests and pious people. However, the opening to non-Greeks was all but non-existent. From the archbishop down, English people were told to go away, at best being told to join the Church of England or else to learn Greek, ‘if you want to become a Greek’, at worst being told to ‘go away’ by one Cypriot priest, only in the most vulgar way possible in the English language.

Fifty years ago, the Romanian Church was more or less inexistent, as the whole country was controlled by the Romanian Secret Police.

The Three Big Churches in 2026

Today, the Russians remain in small groups here, small because they have all failed to pass on the Faith to locally-born children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren and so on. No Russian group has learned how to cope with assimilation. Today, the larger (still small) group is 100% attached to the Russian Federation, politically and in all other ways, and is much compromised by scandals. The smaller group, dominated by American Trumpians, just encourages the crazies and so spawns old calendarists, just as the Russian Church inside Russia once spawned old ritualists, and is much compromised by appalling scandals. Another even smaller group just hangs on. All three groups are dying out – for all have survived largely because of immigration from Moldova. By far the saddest thing about the Russian Church is that it did not learn from history and so it has condemned itself to repeat the same mistakes as before the Revolution. Today, inside the ex-Soviet Union, the Russian Church strangely resembles the pre-Revolutionary Russian Church, with the same politicisation, the same militarisation, the same empty ritualism, the same inhuman rigidity, the same pharisaic and blind repetition that only they are ‘canonical’, the same blind obedience to the hierarchy and the State, regardless of Christ and His teaching.

Today, the Greek Patriarchate of Constantinople in this country, although still dominated by Greek Cypriots whose lives are largely devoted to Hellenism, has a very dynamic archbishop, whose English is better than his Greek, and who is desperately trying to save his archdiocese from self-extinction despite his elderly flock. As he said to us a few months ago, he has one hundred priests who are so old that they are likely to die within the next five years and three candidates to replace them. For forty years the previous administration ignored all the warnings that this would happen. The saddest thing about the Greek Church is that they did not learn from the suicide of the Russian Church, so they are condemned to repeat the same suicide and also die out.

The Romanian Patriarchate is today by far the largest Church as a result of the immigration of four to five million Romanians and Moldovans here over the last 20 years. Overall, our two Autonomous Romanian Orthodox Metropolias in Western Europe have 10 bishops, 1,283 churches and 30 monasteries, which makes them by far the largest Local Church in Western Europe. We are about four times larger than the Greek Patriarchate of Constantinople in Western Europe, five times larger than the Russian Church in Western Europe (most of which is composed of Romanian-speaking Moldovans) and incomparably larger than the tiny ROCOR and Antiochian dioceses, both with less than 100, mainly tiny (between 10 and 50 people), communities.

Conclusion: The Challenge for the Romanian Church

Between 1917 and 1962 by far the largest Diaspora Church in Western Europe, albeit divided into three warring groups, was the Russian Church. Between 1962 and 2007 by far the largest was the Patriarchate of Constantinople. But they both lost their dominating positions and indeed the respect of others, the Russians through their isolationist totalitarian politics, which excludes Non-Russians, and their lack of communion with others, the Greeks through their sheer racism. Today some 85% of Orthodox here are Romanian or Moldovan. Can the Romanians, now by far the biggest group, keep their position and the respect of others?

The Romanian Church has many devout clergy and people. It has the Carpathian spirit of solidarity. We are together in the Romanian Church, this is the People’s Church, with a sense of community, family and friendship. The Romanian language is a Latin language, written in the Latin alphabet. There is neither the politics, nor the military-style rigidity of the Russians, nor the racism of the Greeks. Moreover, and most importantly, the Romanian Church alone is in communion with everyone, in schism with no-one. However, the Romanian Church still faces two great challenges.

The first weakness of the Romanian Church, at least in Romania, is the temptation of money. Any Romanian layperson will tell you of a bad experience in Romania with a member of the clergy who demanded money from them. This is why some Romanians have become Protestants. I have not seen this temptation in the Romanian Diaspora, but we cannot be complacent. The second weakness of the Romanian Church is the potential lack of openness to others, in other words, the weakness of nationalism. To found a new Local Church in the Diaspora means to be open to others, to warring Greeks and Russians in particular, to be able to co-operate with others in a common language, accepting different languages, calendars and customs, and not imposing one’s own. Is this possible? Will it too fail to learn from history and repeat the errors of the Russians, repeated by the Greeks? We await the inevitable verdict of the history of the future.

 

 

The Fall of the West and the Path to Orthodoxy

For thirty long years, from 1992 to 2022, the ruling class of the Western Empire was able to act with impunity, it had a monopoly of power, for it lived in a multipolar world, without opposition. Those members of the ‘liberal’ Establishment could do whatever they wanted at that time and that is what they did: from asset-stripping the ‘Third World’, to buggering one another (having made that legal), to harvesting the organs of Kosovan Albanians, to pimping hungry and immoral Ukrainian girls (‘Russian brides’) (Epstein), or using them for surrogacy, and sodomising Ukrainian boys (a Prime Minister). After all, they believed in ‘liberalism’, meaning do whatever you want, rape and plunder others, both literally and metaphorically.

And inevitably, at the same time, as a result of its amoral liberal free for all, the all-powerful Western Establishment began to collapse. Having asset-stripped other countries under the name of ‘foreign investments’, they asset-stripped at home, under the name of ‘modernisation’ and ‘privatisation’. The collapse started with the revelations about Roman Catholic pedophilia, which soon led to the exposure of Anglicans and later spread to the American Synod, on the fringes of the Russian Church. Then, in general, to the political, royal, business and media elite. In other words, to all the parasites, as per Epstein. The barbarians were not at the gates, they were running the show, as they always had.

Their unipolar monopoly was destroyed by the rising again of Crucified Russia from 2000 on, once the Russian Church had begun canonising its New Martyrs and Confessors. That is why the Western elite hates Putin. He did not agree to the destruction of Russia through its disintegration and its asset-stripping and, moreover, he does not accept sexual perversions. The destruction of Russia was Hitler’s idea, repeated by Thatcher, with the genocide of Russians, sending the remaining forty million Russians to live beyond the Volga, thus sending back ‘the Asiastics’. This is why they invested in the anti-Russian Ukraine, whose ‘rare earths’ they want, and whose people would die for them ‘to the last Ukrainian.’

Amidst this moral chaos, there are those who search for some kind of morality and found, from the internet, the Orthodox Church. However, the vast majority of those do not want to come to Orthodoxy with an open heart, they are merely running away from the chaos of the West and its Baal worship: ‘Any port in a storm’ and to their imaginary ‘Warhammer’ Russia, for example. They are by mentality zealot Protestants who adopt an outward appearance of Orthodoxy, buying icons, incense and rosaries from online ‘souvenir shops’, growing long hair and beards, or in the few cases of women, putting on long skirts and wearing what look like tablecloths on their heads. Very few of them wish to become real Orthodox Christians.

Most of those who want the uniform, but not the battle, do not come to the canonical Orthodox Church, they go to fringe convert groups which promote extremist ideologies and persecute canonical Orthodox. There they find weird convert priests and bishops. These are often closet homosexuals and dislike families, women and children, not to mention the canons. That suits them and their phariseeism, which denies the Love and Truth of the Church. And that is good for us. We can continue our witness, uncontaminated by those who do not love us and the Church, but want to come to us only because they hate others. Such we do not need. We only accept the repentant into the Church. For nothing can be built on hatred.

 

 

Russian Orthodox Church Disunity

The Orthodox Church is the bimillennial Confederation of Local Christian Churches, each largely covering one nationality, one language, one culture and one territory, Russian, Romanian, Greek, Serbian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Arab, Albanian etc. Today there are sixteen Local Orthodox Churches in all and some have flocks in Western countries as a result of emigration, which has taken place either for economic or for political reasons. Over fifty years ago, in the 1970s in England, I was able to join the Orthodox Church through the émigré Russian Church, an emigration which had taken place after 1917 for political reasons.

Cut off from Russia and cut off from new emigres by Soviet atheism, the dying Church in the Russian emigration was really the only Local Orthodox Church which accepted or needed to accept Non-Russians. (Other Local Churches would generally not even accept those of another nationality. Since then, barriers to other nationalities have to some extent been broken, but that is another story). However, as a result of the political nature of its emigration, the émigré Russian Church was split into three warring parts, none of which was in communion. They were split by political beliefs, which is the only reason why Churches split.

The largest and most international émigré fraction was called the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR), composed of anti-Communist emigres and centred in the USA. Then came a smaller part which we may call the Paris Emigration (PE), centred in France and composed of emigres who favoured a Western liberal political system for Russia. Finally, there came by far the smallest part, called the Moscow Patriarchate (MP), composed of emigres who, though members of the Church, out of patriotism turned a blind eye to Soviet atheism. What is the position now, 35 years after Soviet atheism?

The ideology of Soviet atheism was replaced by another ideology, Russian nationalism. Nevertheless, as a result of the fall of Soviet atheism, both ROCOR and PE came into communion with the MP and, briefly, with each other. This was based on sympathy for Russia, but not on full sympathy, as the Westernised descendants of both émigré groups today represent not Russian nationalism, but, respectively, US nationalism and Western liberalism. And for this ironic reason the very aggressive and ideological ROCOR group is no longer in communion with the PE. Thus, division continues, again because of politics.

Thus, even if ideologies have switched from what they were when the Soviet Union existed, they are still here. Having worked for fifty years to bring the three warring émigré groups together, the present lack of communion is tragic for me. Sadly, the younger generation of ROCOR is so Americanised, one might say, narcissistically and imperialistically Trumpian, that it does not accept any views other than its own. Such sectarian exclusivity betrays a vision of the Church which is opposed to the Church as Christian communion and sees it as an exclusive and intolerant sect which condemns and punishes all who disagree.

As regards the fall of the MP into nationalism, this was a logical development from the old Soviet nationalism of the period before the fall of the USSR, but in a new form. Soviet nationalism was paradoxical for Orthodox, as how could Christians be loyal to Soviet atheism? However, this Russian nationalism is also paradoxical. It makes of the Church an Army, a spirit of militarism, ritualism and clericalism, according to which everything is literally uniform, in which there is no place for personal spiritual inspiration and diversity. All isms quench the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth and Love, and nationalism is no different.

Thus, all three parts of the Russian Church illustrate divisiveness and exclusivity through the adoption of different political ideologies, tragically putting Caesar above Christ. Until all three parts of the Russian Church revert to full Orthodoxy, abandoning political or nationalist ideologies of any sort, there will be no general Orthodox unity. The sign of the reversion of the Russian Church to Orthodoxy will be in its recovery of Catholicity, that is, in its renewed and visible communion with the peoples of all other Local Churches. Once we see that, we shall see a renewed and valuable Russian contribution to Pan-Orthodox unity.

 

 

 

Keeping the Faith: Pastoral Considerations and Church Unity in the Diaspora

Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!

Psalm 133, 1

Exactly 50 years ago I stood in the then newly-built Serbian church in Birmingham and listened to a sermon given by the late Fr Vladimir (later Bp Basil) Rodzianko. He spoke of the ‘sin of jurisdictions’ and looked forward idealistically to a time when there would no longer be any jurisdictions. I knew then that that was unrealistic. Indeed, 50 years have passed and there are now more ‘jurisdictions’ than ever. After over fifty years of life in the Orthodox Diaspora in Western Europe, divided into several separate Church jurisdictions, I have come to certain conclusions.

These conclusions were fed firstly by observing how the post-1917 Russian Diaspora died out in Western Europe (as a clergyman in Paris in the 1980s and 1990s I buried many of its last very elderly representatives, who had been adults before 1917). Then, secondly, I have seen how the 1950s Greek Cypriot Diaspora has also nearly completely died out in Britain. They both died out because they failed almost wholly to pass on the Faith to their locally born generations.

In 1973, I met the future Metr Kallistos (Ware), who tried and failed to unite local Russian, Greek and Serbian Orthodox into one shared church in Oxford. In 1980 I met the late Fr Alexander Schmemann, who invited me to become a priest in the USA. I politely refused his offer, as I felt my place was in Europe. I witnessed how in North America his attempt to found a new Local Church, called the OCA (the Orthodox Church in America), failed to unite Orthodox there – it unites only some 10-15% of Orthodox. Both were valiant attempts by sincere and often admirable people to do good, but both failed.

Others also tried to do something in this respect, like those who argued with each other, Fr (now St) Sophrony (Sakharov) and Metr Antony (Bloom), who tonsured me reader in 1981. The outstanding figure with Fr Sophrony was undoubtedly Fr Raphael (Noica), who gave me very good advice between 1975 and 1983. Another influence was Protopresbyter Alexei Kniazev, the rector of the St Sergius Institute of Orthodox Theology, where I studied.

However, the most outstanding figure I met was Archbishop Antony (Bartoshevich) of Geneva, who ordained me priest in 1991, after I had served for seven years as a deacon. He led the multinational Archdiocese of Western Europe, veering neither towards liberal modernism, nor to sectarian old calendarism. He was the successor of St John Maximovich as Archbishop of Western Europe. Clergy of seventeen different nationalities concelebrated at his funeral.

One of the problems with the experiments in Oxford and the USA was the lack of respect for the people in the parishes. Firstly, any Diaspora parish must use at least two languages, that of the main national group (or national groups, if there is more than one) and the local language. The latter is necessary for the children and grandchildren of immigrants in the Church, for the locally-born spouses of the inevitable mixed marriages, as well as for those received into the parish from local people who wish to join the Orthodox Church.

We do not wish the children of immigrants to lose the language of their parents, but they go to school in English, they think in English, they speak their parents’ language with an English accent. If they can understand the Church in English, then they will not reject the Church in the language of their parents. This is a psychological fact and, as any pastor will tell you, more than 50% of what we do is understanding our parishioners’ psychology.

Respect must also be shown for the calendars used by the parishioners, and for their cultures and customs. In order to do this, there may need to be at least two priests of different nationalities in each parish and choirs must be organised. We have seen too many cases of just the opposite, of disrespect and even mockery for different languages, calendars, cultures and customs. That is unacceptable because it is unChristian. Expressions of hatred for others are unChristian and eventually will lead to the downfall of parishes and even of whole dioceses. We are eyewitnesses of this. You cannot build a Church on negativity or hatred.

Here is a brief outline as to how we could perhaps proceed to keep locally-born generations inside the Church and also to help unite the Diaspora Church, which is divided administratively. The secret is in not being exclusive. Thus:

  1. No National Flags

A Church with flags is a Church which divides. Christ has no flag. Our only ‘flag’ is the Cross. Flags belong to the secular world, not to Christ. The absence of a flag, Russian, Greek, Romanian, Serbian or other, does not of course mean that it can be replaced by a local flag, by some sort of local nationalism, British, American, French or other. That is just as negative. If we want to have flags with their nationalism, let us keep them at home and not bring them to church.

  1. No Political Ideologies or ‘Isms’

Ideologies, or ‘isms’, are always divisive because they are narrow and sectarian. For instance, I have witnessed how the OCA tried to impose the new calendar on Slav origin parishes in the USA and condescendingly impose non-traditional, liberal and even modernist liturgical practices on them. This was very divisive and as a result many parishes left the OCA and many more did not want to join it. They felt they had been excluded.

On the other hand, I have also witnessed how certain clergy in one Russian emigration splinter tried to impose an extreme right-wing ideology, allied with old calendarism. They promoted themselves rather pharisaically as an exclusive ‘One True Church’, refusing concelebration and communion with the Local Churches, as ‘they are in error’ and ‘we do not like them’.

This sectarianism was very divisive and it only attracts converts from Catholicism and Protestantism with pathological problems, while turning away from the Church those with healthy psychologies. Such an aggressive splinter can never be part of a future Local Church and does not want to be. That is why we belong to the Romanian Orthodox Church, away from all extremes and schisms.

  1. No Money

What makes Orthodox of all nationalities reject their own Church more than anything else is the story that the clergy are only interested in money. Fixed tariffs for baptisms, weddings, funerals, memorials etc are fatal in this respect. The stories of laypeople about such matters, true or untrue, are legion. Either priests must have a secular profession and parishioners pay only for the often high costs of the church-building, or else an arrangement must be made with parishioners that they make known their salaries and they give a percentage of their salaries to the priest. In this way the priest’s salary will be the average of their salaries. For example, if there are 100 salaried parishioners, they could each give 1% of their salary to the priest. If there are 200 salaried parishioners, they could each give 0.5% of their salary to the priest etc.

The Church as a Family

Without national flags, political ideologies or money scandals, if we wish to keep everyone together inside the Church, then we must experience the Church as a warm and loving Family, to which all Orthodox can belong.

Orthodox who have been uprooted from their homelands, usually for economic or else, as in the Communist past, for ideological reasons, want to belong to something. Perfectly naturally, they have a problem of identity. ‘Who am I’?, they ask. However, those born locally, of such Russian, Greek, Romanian, Serbian or other immigrant parents, and who all speak the local language better than that of their parents, also want to belong to something, they also have a problem of identity. I tell all my people that, although we have a State passport with a flag on it, our spiritual passport has no flag, or political party, and under the Nationality section, it says: ‘Orthodox Christian’. This is our spiritual nationality and identity, we belong to the Orthodox Christian Family. Our unity is in our common Orthodox Christian Faith and Love.