On the Present Splits in ROCOR

Introduction: The Historic Splits in the Russian Emigration

After the so-called ‘Russian Revolution’, or rather place coup d’etat, in 1917, the Russian Church in the Emigration split into three groups. These splits were purely political and based on differing attitudes to the Soviet State. However, once the Soviet Union had fallen in 1991, there was no longer any reason for those splits, except for inertia, the ‘enemy deprivation syndrome’, as it is called, the need to be ‘against’ anyone who resists global Western control (‘Globalism’). This is a phenomenon throughout the Western political elite, but also among westernised Russians. It resulted in their bloody and failed invasions of the Muslim world and in the present tragic conflict in Kiev. The latter has been used as a failed puppet and proxy to try and destroy the Russian Federation, breaking it into colonisable pieces, ready to be asset-stripped by Western mining and oil corporations, as it was in the 1990s.

The absurdity of these continuing Russian Church splits became especially obvious after the Jubilee Council in Moscow in the Year 2000, when the Church in Moscow at last openly condemned its former co-operation with the atheist State (‘Sergianism’), condemned ecumenist syncretism (‘Nikodimism’), and began the canonisation of the New Martyrs and Confessors, including that of the Imperial Family. (The number canonised is now over 30,000, and the process is continuing). Although only 57% of the small Russian émigré group in Paris returned to Moscow as late as 2018, 95% of the much larger ROCOR émigré group had formally returned in 2007. However, that was not the end of the ROCOR saga – the return was for many only formal. Since 2017, after ten years of relative stability since 2007, its bishops and 300 or so parishes, mainly very small, between 10 and 40 people in number, have been splintering into three groups.

Fragment One: The Vitalyites

We have named the first extreme after the ROCOR Metropolitan Vitaly (Ustinov) (1910-2006). He was the last pre-Revolutionary born ROCOR Metropolitan and a ferocious opponent of the Moscow Patriarchate. After agreeing to unity with Moscow in 2007, those in this extreme in fact ‘played’ the Moscow Patriarchate. Although they had signed up to unity in 2007, they simply used this canonical unity obtained for appearances. Behind the screen of canonical unity, they continued their uncanonical acts. Thus, though not concelebrating with Moscow, they can claim ‘to be in communion’ with Moscow and are therefore ‘canonical’. Though they kept a low profile at first, this became clear from 2017 on and their palace coup against the late Metr Hilarion (Kapral), whose documents they autopenned with impunity.

Composed largely of convert bishops and made up of crazy converts and CIA operatives, from 2017 on the Vitalyites, open fans of Trump, began to form yet another ‘One True Church’. They claimed to be ‘more Russian than the Russians’, (real Russians do not have to pretend) and worked to form yet another old calendarist-type, apocalyptic sect, just like the 5% who had refused to sign up to unity and left ROCOR in 2007 and immediately split into four tiny, warring groups. Vitalyite Orthodoxy is that of the ghetto and the museum and refuses to live in the real world, preferring a self-justifying, US theme-park ideal of ‘Holy Rus’. However, the present Vitalyites are unlike those far less subtle and ignorant groups who refused to sign up in 2007 and left ROCOR then, this group remained to sabotage ROCOR from inside through intrigue and deceit.

Thus, as soon as he had signed the Act of Canonical Communion in May 2007, which he had planned, the leader of this group was welcomed back from Moscow by the local Moscow Archbishop, who rejoiced and commented that ‘now we can do everything together’. That representative was shocked to hear the answer: ‘No, nothing has changed, we are not together’. This group displays the same harsh and sectarian fanaticism and cultish and judgemental phariseeism as those who had left in 2007, but works to corrupt and sectarianise the Church from inside, thinking they have outsmarted isolated Moscow, which is desperate for good PR.

These mainly Western converts display hatred for the present Russian Federation, its President, and those nostalgic for Stalin. They foolishly (or are they paid by the CIA for this stance?) also support Western propaganda efforts which call on Russian troops to leave the liberated Russian territories in the Ukraine, which had been genocided by the Kiev regime. In its hostility to the Russian Federation, this basically anti-Russian group is no different to the other Vitalyites who left ROCOR in 2007 and created similar apocalyptic ‘One True Church’ sects and rebaptise others, including Orthodox. They maintain that they are ‘the only canonical Orthodox in the world!’ This reveals their underlying, schismatic, Calvinist and Lutheran, mentality. This is not theology, it is pathology.

Fragment Two: The Neo-Sergianists

The second extreme, which is the one deliberately left in power by the bribing and flattering Vitalyites, is composed of Neo-Sergianists. They are named after Metropolitan Sergius of Moscow (1867-1944), who became Patriarch of the Russian Church for a few brief months at the end of his life by compromising with the militant atheists, receiving money and power in return. Although these ROCOR Neo-Sergianists mainly live in the USA, their view is that of Russian Federation loyalists and they have adopted the same Neo-Sergianist attitudes to wealth and centralising power as the worst elements in today’s Moscow Patriarchate. And they hold exactly the same centralist, nationalist, militarist, ritualist and clericalist attitudes which they had previously condemned, as does Moscow.

The temptations were too great for them and they succumbed. There is little spiritual and pastoral here, but, as in Moscow, much that is political. Their harsh censorship is exactly mirrored in Moscow, where, to the scandal of the faithful, the intellectuals, liberals, ecumenists and homosexuals have just censored one of the most popular akathists to the martyred Tsar. (They hate those loyal to the Tsar). The Budapest and other scandals have not yet brought them to sobriety and understanding, nor have the appalling scandals in ROCOR. Thus, Moscow is losing all Non-Russian Orthodox, in the Ukraine, Moldova, the Baltics, Belarus, Central Asia and Orthodox throughout the Diaspora, just as ROCOR is losing its Orthodox too – see below.

The Orthodox or Tikhonites

Finally, there are the rest of us, the Orthodox, who resist both extremist political factions, the Vitalyites and the Sergianists. We are also called Tikhonites. Unable to agree to uncanonical ROCOR schism, sect and self-isolation, some 10% of us former ROCOR members, all Tikhonites, have already joined other Local Churches, that is, we have joined the mainstream. However, most of the Tikhonite clergy and people, even if besieged by the Vitalyite and Neo-Sergianist bishops (the two sides of exactly the same coin – extremes always meet and collude), have so far been able to remain in ROCOR. Nevertheless, their situation is becoming more and more difficult, as all five remaining Tikhonite bishops have been ‘retired’ and the last active semi-Tikhonite (though he was coloured by Neo-Sergianism too), Archbishop Peter of Chicago, passed away.

We are called Tikhonites because we are devoted to the Russian-born American citizen, missionary to Alaska, and saint, Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow (+ 1925), previously Bishop of San Francisco and later of New York. He prophesied: ‘The night will come soon, dark and long’. Indeed, it has been. Following his arrival in New York from Le Havre in December 1898, the then Bp Tikhon gathered together Russians, Ukrainians, Carpatho-Russians, Greeks, Antiochians and Serbs and created Orthodox unity in North America, before going on to become Patriarch of Moscow and a saint. It is no surprise that the present leader of the international ‘Orthodox Church in America’ is also called Metr Tikhon. We Tikhonites also much venerate the international St John (Maximovich) (+ 1966), who was also slandered, suspended and put on trial by the then ROCOR episcopate.

We Orthodox, or Tikhonites, know that the post-1917 Russian Emigration, like the Soviet Union itself, has died out and that, living in Western countries and in post-Communist times, there is no reason for us to be separated from other Local Churches. It is our destiny to work together with other Orthodox, contributing our specific liturgical identity and our devotion to the martyred Tsar and all the other New Martyrs and Confessors. As regards the tragic conflict in the Ukraine, we are not naïve and have fully understood that this a geopolitical conflict between the aggressive and greedy atheist West and the Russian State. It has nothing to do with the Ukraine as such. That is just the battlefield. We are horrified by pictures of clergy blessing weapons of war, on both sides.

As regards President Putin, we know that he is a powerful and admired Russian nationalist politician, a very cautious lawyer and a diplomat. But clearly he is not at all our long-awaited Tsar. As the contemporary Russian historian, Peter Multatuli, great-grandson of a New Martyr faithful to the Tsar, has put it: The great mission was given to us, not by rebellious human desire, but by the will of God. Our mission has nothing to do with….so-called ‘Russian nationalism’. Our mission is the rebirth of Russian Civilisation, in which all nationalities who wish so are united for life in God and with God, in the world of Goodness and Justice, in which we can stand up to the atheistic and anti-human Western ‘New Order’, whose aim is to annihilate man as God’s creation.

France, 25 October 2025

 

My Fourth Pilgrimage to Moldova and Romania: 6-17 October 2025

It was then that falsehood came into our Russian land. The great misfortune, the root of all the evil to come, was the loss of faith in the value of personal opinions. People imagined that it was out of date to follow their own moral sense, that they must all sing the same tune in chorus, and live by other people’s notions, the notions which were being crammed down everybody’s throats.

Boris Pasternak, Dr Zhivago, Chapter 13, Section 14

Foreword: Romania and the Universal Church

It was in May 1978 that I spoke to the late Marianna Greenan, a member of the Russian émigré Behr family, about her pilgrimage to Romania. (Both the English and the French branches of the Behrs of that generation were staunch supporters of the Moscow Patriarchate). She told me how she had visited a small embroidery workshop in Romania and realised that all the workers were nuns who had been forced to leave their Convent, as the Communists had closed it. One of them who spoke some Russian explained to Marianna that she said one Jesus Prayer for every stitch that she made.

Then the woman, or rather nun, whispered to Marianna that ‘our persecution is all the fault of you Russians’. Marianna, a member of the Patriarchate, was astonished and asked why. The nun told her: ‘Because you overthrew our Orthodox Tsar and so we are all suffering’. This story has remained with me these nearly fifty years. For the whole Orthodox world has indeed suffered ever since the great treason of the upper-class Russian aristocrats and generals, among them Romanovs, in 1917: ‘All around treason and cowardice and deceit’, as the Tsar wrote.

Introduction: Carpathia and Hesychasm

My latest pilgrimage here has reminded me of my 2004 pilgrimage to the Presov Rus homeland of the ever-memorable Carpatho-Rusyn Metropolitan Lavr (Shkurla) in north-eastern Slovakia. Just across the border from Moldova, eastern Slovakia and northern Romania, Carpatho-Rus, which is still under Ukrainian occupation and so goes by the Kievan name of Transcarpathia, still has hesychast hermits living in the forests on the mountain-slopes.

St Job of Ugolka (+ 1985) was such a one. He is the still living fruit of the Athonite tradition, defended theologically against secularist humanism by St Gregory Palamas. This tradition went north from Athos through Bulgaria and Rila, to Serbia and Romania, to the Russia of St Sergius of Radonezh and his 70 monasteries. Later it passed on to St Paisy (Velichkovsky) in Neamt, St Seraphim of Sarov, the Optina Elders and St John of Kronstadt. That tradition is alive today in such Carpathian lights as Metr Onufry of Kiev.

7 October: A Meeting with Metr Vladimir of Chisinau (Moscow Patriarchate)

Most of Moldova was in pre-Soviet times known as Bessarabia, as Pushkin described, and was an integral part of Romania. However, with the Soviet occupation that large province and its churches were forced to join the Moscow Patriarchate. Since the fall of the USSR in 1991, when only some 380 churches remained open, the Church has been restored (nearly 1300 more churches repaired or built) and the people have been returning to the Romanian Church.

The return to the Romanian Church is a spontaneous movement of the people, followed, but not led, by the clergy, as several priests confirmed to me. As the elderly die out, this movement is inevitable, only those who recall Soviet times are staying with Moscow. It has become obvious that Moldova will disappear from the map of Europe within a few years and will be absorbed back into Romania, together with its Church.

Meeting at the Metropolia, Metr Vladimir told me that at present he still has 1,350 churches in this country of two and a half million, all of them using the old calendar. As for the Romanian Church in Moldova, known as the Autonomous Metropolia of Bessarabia (which mirrors the Autonomy given to the Romanian Church in Western Europe), it has taken 300 churches back from Metr Vladimir, all of them also using the old calendar.

The number returning to the Romanian Church has doubled in the last two years and is increasing every month. Other priests told me that the numbers of people leaving and taking their clergy with them, suggest that the Metropolia of Bessarabia, for now with 4 bishops, will be larger than the Moscow Patriarchate, for now with 11 bishops, within two years. The movement is one-way and has been much accelerated by the present events in the Ukraine.

Metr Vladimir admitted to me that the essence of the problem is that the Russians in Moscow treat Moldovans as ‘third-class Orthodox’ and refused to give it Autocephaly. Now it is too late for that. I told the Metropolitan that this is also exactly what Moscow does to most Moldovans in the Diaspora (apart from those under the enlightened Metr Nestor), as well as to English and French Orthodox and to other Non-Russian Orthodox in the Diaspora, stabbing us in the back. He did not know that there are now 30 Moldovan parishes under the Romanian Church in Italy, and 5 in England, with 3 which took refuge in the Romanian Church from ROCOR in 2022.

I said to him that the problem is that he is not allowed a Diaspora and that therefore he is losing most of his Diaspora Moldovans, in the same way as he is losing his churches inside Moldova. I added that we would have joined the Moldovan Church ten years ago, if it had had a Diaspora, rather than continue to be mistreated by politically-minded, Greek-hating Russians who to boot ‘dislike Romanians and only half-like Moldovans’ (and only half-like anyone who is not American), to quote one of their bishops. The Metropolitan looked as though he too had been living with that Cross for a long time. At present he cannot visit Britain or Ireland – the authorities will not grant him a visa.

Metr Vladimir asked me what our experience had been. I informed him that I had studied at St Serge in Paris with the last emigres from before the Revolution. I had spent 47 years in the Russian Church, battling for its unity and meeting two Patriarchs. I told him how a very young Metropolitan in Moscow, who has never spent any time in a monastery, literally told us, all six churches, to ‘go away’. When informed that after nearly fifty years of faithfulness to the Russian Church we would therefore be forced to join another canonical Local Church, the Romanian, the young Metropolitan had simply answered: ‘Too bad for you’.

Metr Vladimir invited us to concelebrate with him; he has no problem with the Romanian Church, despite the fact that the people are leaving him for it. You cannot go against the people when they act en masse, and he knows that. The people ask their priests: ‘We have joined the Romanian Church, will you come with us?’ The priests follow the fait accompli.

8 October: The Convent of Suruceni

Today we go to venerate the relics of St Dionysius of Bessarabia (1868-1943), a great hierarch. He did much to translate the liturgical texts into Romanian, was a patriot of Greater Romania, and his incorrupt relics lie in this beautiful convent, which is still under Metropolitan Vladimir. We venerated his relics, took part in the Akathist and spoke to the Abbess. We were impressed. One of the nuns, who had spent 20 years in the Ukraine, asked me about our views of Metr Onufry (‘a living saint’), and Metr Antony (Bloom) and St Sophrony (Sakharov) and my impressions of them both and why they had argued in 1965. I told her that our church is dedicated to St John (Maximovich), who stood above all such émigré personality disputes.

9 October: St Martha and Maria Convent

Today we went to one of the largest convents in Moldova, also still under Metropolitan Vladimir. A former Communist youth camp, it was founded in 1992 on 200 euros (!). It is a work of faith. It has three churches, one a magnificent large, frescoed church, some sixty nuns and many other very large buildings, including a boarding-school. It runs from the profits of its extensive farm. I met Fr Andrei, the elder, a most impressive spiritual father. We talked long and he spoke of his very poor childhood, when the Communists so oppressed the Church, and he described the Convent’s very, very close links with the monastery of Putna in Romania, which is a great centre of holiness. Putna donated a whole wooden church to the Convent, which stands as the third church.

11 October

Today we baptised a child and served a three-hour Vigil at the very large, brand-new church in Costinesti, a small town near Chisinau. A new Convent is being built alongside it.

12 October

Today we celebrated the Sunday liturgy in the same church. It was attended by about 150 people.

14 October

Today is the Feast of the Protection and we celebrate the liturgy in a church outside Chisinau. It is very pleasing to see most of the people, men and women alike, dressed in national costume.

15 October: Meetings with a Saint and two Bishops in Iasi

Today, my namesday, we leave at 3.30 am to go to Iasi in Romania, about three hours away. There are 500 churches in Iasi itself and another 500 outside this City of some 350,000. But the greatest glory of the Metropolia of Iasi is the relics of St Paraskeva. 200,000 pilgrims have gathered for her feast day before, on and after 14 October. We venerate her relics and can feel the warmth of her millennial hands.

We concelebrate the liturgy with the very young-looking Bishop Theofil from Bacau. Apart from all three priests and three parishioners from Colchester, there are another seventeen priests, four protodeacons and hundreds of people. A choir of young women sings magnificently with Russian chants. Communion is from three large chalices. The largest is 2.5 litres, whereas our largest Sunday chalice in Colchester is only 1.5 litres (a third of a gallon). But our altar is bigger! As is usual in the Romanian Church, this is a real concelebration, all are involved, all take an active part. This is the people’s Church. And of course the people understand everything, as the Romanian used for services is close to everyday Romanian. This is different from both the Greek and the Russian Churches.

After the Liturgy we are invited to eat with Bishop Nikifor, one of the two assistant bishops to Metropolitan Theofan of Iasi. We converse in French and Russian. He tells us that the Russian Church’s decision to go into schism and expel us, because we objected to its schism, is the Romanian Church’s gain. We reply to him that it is also our gain! Then we speak of Fr Raphael Noica, whom we both so love.

We compare the People’s Salvation Cathedral (named in typical Romanian fashion, for this is the Church of the People) in Bucharest with the main Russian Military Cathedral outside Moscow, which were both built at the same time. The People’s Salvation Cathedral is the world’s largest and tallest Orthodox Cathedral, with the largest mosaic collection in the world and the world’s largest iconostasis (407 m2). It can take 6,000 worshippers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Salvation_Cathedral

The Russian Military Church outside Moscow, with its Communist emblems:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Cathedral_of_the_Russian_Armed_Forces

The comparison is between light and dark, between the beauty of the Ascension (which is the dedication) and an attempt to intimidate by military victory.

Leadership in today’s Romanian Church is under the influence of the new saints. They are the glory of the Romanian Church, its New Martyrs and Confessors, St Arsenie Boca, St Arsenie Papacioc, St Sofian Boghiu, St Dumitru Stăniloae, my own favourite, St Cleopa Ilie, the Shepherd of the Carpathians, and many others. Fr Cleopa was a living saint, a living icon, the people’s shepherd. These saints are the guarantee of the independence and freedom of the Church from politicians. They have the Tradition of life.

Why are the Patriarchates of Constantinople and Moscow not also under the influence of their Saints? Both have plenty of new and great saints and pastors, Athonite Elders like St Paisios and St Porphyrios, or New Martyrs and Confessors, but somehow their politically-minded episcopates seem to have sidelined these pastors and the veneration of the new saints is often nominal.

16 October: Back in Moldova

In a town outside Chisinau I meet one of the most senior priests in Moldova, a theologian, born in Romanian North Bukovina, which Stalin stole and added to the Ukraine in 1945, though this priest has lived in Moldova for decades. I will call him Fr X. We discuss our many mutual acquaintances, living and reposed: Patriarch Alexiy II, Patriarch Kyrill, Metr Onufry of Kiev (who is so similar to the ever-memorable Metr Lavr (Shkurla)), Metr Tikhon (Shevkunov), Metr Antony (Bloom), St Sophrony (Sakharov), Fr Alexander Schmemann.

Interestingly, Fr X. wears his mitre and two crosses only at Easter. I have the same custom, wearing them only ‘for the sake of the feast’, ‘radi prazdnika’. We have the same attitude to such pompous awards. He gives me an icon of St Alexander, a local New Martyr, martyred by the Soviets in Kazan in 1943.

He tells me that several of the local Moscow Patriarchate bishops are either married or else divorced, one is a politician in a cassock, only one is a monk. I tell him that the situation is no different from in Russia, but that I prefer the ones who are still married, at least they are normal. Those who could not live with their wife may have some personality flaw and, unmarried, they may have other vices. It is what the Apostle Paul recommended, that candidates be ‘the husband of one wife’. There are of course the homosexuals, of whom there is only one notorious case in Moldova, though quite a minority of the episcopate in Russia and elsewhere is, as the Budapest affair publicly proved, even to the naïve and the liberals.

I suggest that Moscow, like Constantinople, spends too much time consorting with the Pope of Rome and that his Papism has rubbed off on them. Fr X. corrects me and says that the Pope of Rome would love to have as much power and money as they have in Moscow and Constantinople.

Fr X., who knows Metr Vladimir very well, both before and since transferring to the Romanian Church, once accompanied Metr Vladimir to Romania on a secret trip to negotiate the transfer of his Church to the Romanian Church. Fr X. commented that Metr Vladimir would like to take the whole of his Moldovan Church to the Romanian Church, instead of seeing batches of parishes go to the Romanian Church, one group at a time, the largest batch so far numbering sixty, which was just over a year ago. However, Metr Vladimir cannot transfer, for he is a prisoner, a political hostage. As for the pieces of paper ‘defrocking’ clergy who join the Romanian Church, the Metropolitan told everyone to ignore them – they are purely political documents, which he is forced to issue ‘by the powers that be’.

We agree that the problem is that so many in the Russian Church think in the Soviet categories of atheism and nationalism, as politicians and businessmen in cassocks, but not as pastors. After 1991 they changed from atheism to Orthodoxy overnight, but only in dress. Pastors would long ago have granted autocephaly to any Church which is present in any numbers in the thirteen independent Republics, apart from Russia and Georgia which already had autocephalous Churches, that the USSR broke up into. Now, through its Soviet centralisation, Moscow is losing everything. It is this purely secular and political centralisation of power which makes clericalist Moscow bishops into militaristic generals, who then bully, humiliate and intimidate priests as soldiers whose task is to carry out rituals (‘treboispolniteli’).

We come to the discussion of the conflict in the Ukraine and the delusional attitude of the West. I mention that Hitler in his last months was also delusional, as were his propaganda media. People are always delusional, when they are losing a war. This delusion comes from hubris, as was Hitler’s case, as is the EU’s case and that of all the other Globalists. Hubris comes from the need for victory instead of reconciliation, which friendly groups promote. Hubris in today’s case too indicates a loss of contact with reality and the huge overestimation of the West’s own competence, accomplishments and capabilities. As they say, ‘pride goes before the fall’. As for Narcissus, he rejected the advances of all who approached him, and instead fell in love with his own reflection in a swamp. The swamp in Washington?

Fr X. criticises President Putin. He said to me that the President does not like the martyred Tsar. President Putin considers that the Tsar was weak in 1917, he should have fought against his enemies, even if millions had died.  I comment that for me the Tsar is a criterion of Orthodoxy and that in this way President Putin shows that he is still a Soviet man, without understanding of Christian martyrdom, of the Sts Boris and Gleb attitude of Tsar Nicholas. This rejection of the Tsar’s attitude was precisely the error of the Whites, who created the Russian Civil War, in which perhaps four million people died. The Whites, led by anti-Bolshevik and also anti-Tsar generals and traitors, disobeyed the Tsar, who wanted only peace.

The Tsar knew that it would be useless to fight militarily against the Bolsheviks. Apostasy can only be cured by misfortune – you cannot halt it by force. Thus, Bolshevism was only stopped by the satanic intervention of Hitler, who murdered 27 million people of the old Russian Empire. The White Orthodox Emigration, from which I was issued, initially through the influence of the Benckendorffs 39 years after the Revolution, has prayed for 100 years and more for the coming of a new Tsar, like St Nicholas, and who will reverse the injustices of 1917. But that can only come through repentance and humility, when Russia is spiritually ready. It is still far from that.

I emphasise to him that the White Orthodox Emigration was only a small part of the whole White Emigration. This was composed for the most part of capitalists and traitors to Russia, greedy and grasping people who only hated the Communists because the latter had stolen their property from them, and not because they opposed Communist atheism – they themselves were atheists and as such also opposed the Church and the Tsar. From the Orthodox viewpoint, they were not White at all, rather they were Black, and in the Russian Civil War, which Tsar Nicholas had avoided, they carried out just as many atrocities as the Reds.

Fr X. asks me about the Russian Emigration and why it split into three parts. I tell him that all was determined by the attitudes of the key players, clergy and laity, to the Soviet State. Those who remained in the Patriarchate were coloured by their deep Soviet patriotism and even support of Stalin. Those who went to Paris, mainly very Westernised Saint Petersburg aristocrats, had overthrown the Tsar and wanted a Western-style Parliament, whereas those in ROCOR were simply anti-Communists, who wanted to restore the pre-Revolutionary State, despite all its social injustices and Church decadence (communion at best once a year) and careerism. Virtually no-one was creative and looked to recreating not the pre-Revolutionary Sate of nominal Orthodoxy, bureaucracy and corruption, but Holy Rus’, except perhaps for the repentant Kartashov.

16 October: Exhibition for Queen Marie

In the afternoon we are invited to the town of Straseni, where there is an exhibition at the Museum dedicated to Queen Marie of Romania (1875-1938). Queen Marie was a unique Anglo-Russian figure, the daughter of Prince Alfred (a son of Queen Victoria) and Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna, daughter of Tsar Alexander III of Russia, aunt of Tsar Nicholas II and the Tsarina. She married Ferdinand of Romania, who became King of Romania.  In 1926 Queen Marie adopted the Orthodox Faith (she did not remain Anglican, as some falsely claim on the internet and on AI, though she later had sentimental sympathies for Bahai). She is much loved here, as she played a great diplomatic role for Romania at the Versailles Peace Conference, wrote over 30 books and spoke poetically of her love for Romania, helping to create Greater Romania, of which she was the last Queen and best ambassadress:

https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=maria+of+romania+film&&mid=8DF9E3904F0F41D6455E8DF9E3904F0F41D6455E&FORM=VAMGZC

Queen Marie, the cousin of King Charles’ great-grandfather, spoke very good Romanian, albeit with an English accent, and was immediately loved by Romanians, being renowned for her beauty, wisdom and love of her adopted country and its customs. Later Communist slanders are not believed. Below are some of her sayings:

Nothing is far when you want to get there.

Nothing is ours really, not even our own souls.

In much knowledge there is also much grief.

To be entirely happy in marriage, the same thing must be important to both.

Fashion exists for women with no taste, etiquette for people with no breeding.

Photographs were taken of our international delegation to the Museum.

17 October

We return to England and hear the tragic but unsurprising news that the Anglican Communion has now officially split into two, with the woke side, led by Canterbury and numbering about 15% of the whole, falling away from the African-led orthodox majority.

On the other hand, we hear the good news that our Archdiocese has obtained a very large former church in Peterborough, which we will use, once we have spent £300,000 on needed repairs. We already have the money. This will further increase and strengthen our Orthodox presence in our native East of England. The Local Church is being constructed. This is God’s work.

 

The People’s Orthodoxy, Church Freedom and the End of the War

So-called ‘Western Civilisation’ is composed of a fatal mixture of Roman paganism and Germanic barbarism. Thus, Western Europe gradually renounced its heritage from the first millennium, real Christianity, and became subject to pagan and barbarian practices. That mixture began to claim supremacy over the rest of the world, now known as ‘Globalism’. To support this claim, the Western world used its form of Christianity to justify itself, and so justified the devil through its reductionist and secularist forms of ‘Christianity’, ‘the white god’.

This ‘Western Civilisation’ began to collapse after the fall of the Western European empires in the First and Second World Wars. These had in fact both begun as purely European Wars, which Western Europe had spread worldwide, but used the USA to rescue it from its two attempted suicides. As a result of their Wars, the European elites failed to keep their empires. Therefore, ever since the Second War they have used and manipulated the Western European-founded USA to maintain at least the remnants of their power and prestige.

No Western European empire was more manipulative than the most successful Western Empire, the British, which used the English language and culture to gaslight the USA. This is the meaning of NATO, whose purpose was, in the words of its first (British) Secretary General, ‘to keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down’. This was in the interests of the American people or in the interests of the peoples of Europe, but it was in the interests of the Euro-American elites, their high finance and military-industrial complex.

The reductionist and secularist forms of Christianity of the Western world differ from real Christianity, which is the Faith of the Orthodox Church. However, there are those ‘Orthodox representatives’ who also use our real Christianity to imitate that of the West, that is, the blend of pagan Roman paganism and Germanic barbarism. They suffer from a ‘Rome syndrome’, which is why such ‘representatives’ continually send their envoys to ingratiate themselves with the Pope of Rome. There is too much Rome and lust for riches and power.

Wherever there are Empires, real Orthodox Christianity has been abused. Most clearly this was the case with the First Rome in the West, but this has also been clear in the case of its imitators, in the Second Rome, Constantinople, and in the Third Rome, Moscow. Outside those two Imperial centres, Constantinople and Moscow, in the provinces, as in the fourteen other Local Orthodox Churches, we follow the People’s Orthodox Christian Faith, not a tightly-controlled, top-down, clericalist and ritualist, nationalised and centralised, State Religion.

Today, Greek leaders have dared to follow the oligarchic, Capitalist interests of the Americans and their vassals. On the other hand, Russian leaders have dared to continue with the Soviet-style, centralised interests of Russian nationalism. In both cases the interests are at root ideological, and tell those who are not of their nationality to ‘go away’, but other Local Churches welcome those who are told to go away. Chauvinism is not why the Lord granted any people the Orthodox Christian Faith. It was given to welcome people, not to dismiss them.

The following of Imperial, nationalist-political, ideological interests comes from a lack of repentance. And when there is no repentance, then enemies come. Thus, the Greeks had to fight the Persians, the Turks, the French, the British and the Americans. As for the Russians, they had to fight against attacks led by the Mongol-Tartars, the Poles, the Swedes, the French, the British, the Germans and today the Americans. As Russia is huge, each attack was combined, composed of several nationalities, as in the Ukraine, where they face the whole West.

Enemies are like the passions. They only attack us when there is no repentance, that is, no defence. This can be seen most clearly in that tragic situation today in the Ukraine. Both peoples are supposedly Orthodox Christian, but they are not, otherwise they would not be fighting. Every attack and every enemy is in fact a call to repentance. As long as there is no repentance, there can be no peace. This is why wars drag on, when they could end very quickly. Such is the case in the Ukraine, even now with a million killed and many more wounded.

The restoration of Orthodox Christianity throughout the Orthodox Church, and so outside Her in missionary work, will come only when Orthodox Christian leaders return to the People’s Orthodoxy and abandon Imperial, nationalist-political, interests. Those secular interests are wholly responsible for the present schism between Russians and Greeks. We confess the Faith, not some rigid, militaristic, and politically-inspired, centralised religion, designed to intimidate priests and imitate States. We refuse your Caesar and, instead, we follow our Christ.

 

 

The Collapse of the Globalists?

Russia hoped for a swift end to the genocide of Russians in the Ukraine by demilitarising and denazifying the illegal and Fascistic Kiev regime. Instead, after April 2022 Russia was obliged by the West to demilitarise and denazify the whole of the West, changing its racist and imperialist mentalities. The latter had depleted its weapon stocks and treasuries, sending so much of what it had to Kiev. Today, at last, although Kiev is running out of Ukrainian men, Ukrainian men are running out of the Ukraine. They do not want to die for a corrupt oligarchic regime. Russian victory is coming.

As a result, the EU and the UK are now in crisis. The unelected head of the EU has again faced a vote of no confidence. The French government has collapsed again and its disruptive narcissistic President, the Rothschild Macron, may have to resign, to the relief of the people he has bankrupted and the Sovereignist National Rally Party. In Britain there seems only to be hatred for the puppet Starmer, the bankers’ candidate, chosen by the oligarchs mainly on account of his Jewish wife and children. The UK Opposition, the 200-year-old Conservative Party, has all but disappeared beneath the tide of the Sovereignist Reform Party. In Germany the militaristic Blackrock Chancellor Merz, is just as unpopular as Starmer and Macron, even though he is trying to forbid the German Sovereignist AfD Opposition.

In Italy Meloni looks as though she could be replaced by the Sovereignist Salvini. The new Polish and Czech governments are realists, not ideologues, and are gradually dropping their support for Kiev. A Georgescu government in Romania would have done the same, only it was banned by the EU, and the EU only won in Moldova because of its massive electoral corruption. Meanwhile, although corrupt pro-EU cliques are still in power in Armenia and Azerbaijan and UK elites are trying to corrupt Bosnia and Kazakhstan, the democratically-elected government in Georgia has held firm against the latest EU attempt at regime change. In Canada, there is repression, as in Switzerland and Britain, where they want digital ID. Authoritarian, police-state movements are in power everywhere in the West.

In the other part of the Western world, the still neocon-controlled USA, there is bankruptcy and chaos, with threats of disastrous new wars against Iran, Venezuela and the Russia – wars of fanatics on three continents at the same time. However, National Sovereignist (Populist) leaders are challenging the old post-World War II order, with leaders like Trump in the USA, Orban in Hungary and Fico in Slovakia. Thus, Orban has rejected the EU euro currency, as he considers that it is dead. For them the future of South-Eastern Europe is with BRICS. Many consider that both the EU and NATO are doomed.

 

The Tragedy of the Russian Church: From Multinational to Mononational

I have always maintained that the Russian State will be the great winner in the Ukraine, but that the great loser will be the Russian Church. This is because it is not run by monks and pastors, by nuns and faithful, but, instead, by bureaucrats and politicians, by ‘effective managers’ (before the Revolution they were contemptuously called ‘good administrators’), or as they say here now, by ‘lanyard bishops’. Money, power and lust are the three temptations for such, as they always have been.

After the beak-up of the Russian Empire in 1917, Orthodox in Finland, Poland and Czechoslovakia found their Church structures subject to Constantinople interference. Eventually, at least in Poland and Czechoslovakia, Orthodox received Autocephalous Churches. After the USSR broke up into 15 independent republics in 1991, a wave of matching autocephalies on the part of the Russian Church in Moscow would have forestalled Constantinople’s similar schismatic interference in several ex-Soviet republics.

That interference came among Orthodox in Estonia (1994), the Ukraine (2018), and, since 2022, in Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, the Diaspora, from where the Russian Patriarch and most of his bishops are banned, and to a lesser extent in Belarus and Central Asia, The Russian Church has missed the train, shooting itself in the foot by holding on to Soviet centralism. It has all been suicidal. The Russian Church has abandoned Non-Russians. It has gone from being a multinational Church to essentially a mononational Church.

The old Russian émigré Church, in which I was brought up, was multinational because its members were never going to return, or go, to Russia. Metr Antony of Sourozh, who tonsured me reader nearly 46 years ago, would never have accepted this nationalisation, the closing-off of the Russian Church to Non-Russians, nor would have St John of Shanghai and his successors, who ordained me. Nor would any of the best representatives of the Russian emigration. If it were possible to spin in your grave, they would be doing so.

Speaking to Metropolitan Vladimir of Moldova in Chisinau today, he told me that he has now lost 300 parishes in Moldova to the Romanian Orthodox Church. Nobody ever returns to him. Some believe that he will find himself completely abandoned by his flock, with his remaining hundreds of others parishes leaving very quickly for the Romanian Church. He has publicly said so. The situation has been made far worse because in the Diaspora hundreds of thousands of Moldovan Orthodox are turned away by the Russian Church and are forced to go to the Romanian Church. He is betrayed by Moscow.

This is just like the Ukrainian Church, which has opened over 100 parishes in Western Europe in the last two years. As one senior Russian Metropolitan said to us in 2022, after 47 years of loyalty to the Russian Church, despite all the persecution there: ‘If you go to the Romanian Church, too bad for you’. This is the new Russian Church attitude to Non-Russians. It is not only racist, it displays incredible pride. With these words that young man renounced the whole missionary heritage of the canonical Russian Church between 1922 and 2022 and maligned the Catholicity of the Church.

 

Q and A: 7 September-7 October 2025

Contemporary Life

Q: What do you think of the assassination of Charlie Kirk?

A: To tell you the truth, I had never heard of Mr Kirk until he had been assassinated, apparently by Ukrainian terrorists, since he was on their death-list.

Of course, it is appalling that anyone can be assassinated, though it happens every day. Mr Trump has assassinated Iranians with pleasure, and supports the assassinations of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and tens of thousands of Russians every year.

I think this assassination typifies this intolerance which the whole Western world is now subject to, both in the US and Western Europe. In the US it is cowboy gun violence, here it is ‘cancelling’ people, creating in ex-Catholic Europe a kind of New Inquisition of censorship, just as frightening as that of the Middle Ages, or else, in ex-Protestant Europe, creating witch-hunts of those who tell the truth.

The Western world has become the new Soviet Union, as had been predicted for over 30 years. It hates the Truth. This hatred of the Truth can only be, as Christ says, because ‘the Truth will set you free’. That is why any tyranny hates the Truth.  People say: ‘I don’t agree with you, therefore I can murder you or ‘cancel’ you’.

Some people want to make Mr Kirk into a martyr. You can only be a martyr if you die for Christ. That is not Mr Kirk’s case. As far as I know, he was an Evangelical, with all the deviations that that entails. Read the lives of the saints rather than spend hours youtubing Mr Kirk. There is a big difference. The martyrs showed humility, patience and the joyful readiness to die for their Faith. People should not be bringing politics, either left-wing or right-wing, into the Church. Our belief is the Gospel, the words of Christ.

Q: What is your view of Jordan Peterson? And Paul Kingsnorth?

A: I don’t know much about Jordan Peterson, but as far as I can see he is an excellent psychologist, a thorough observer of human nature and makes many good suggestions and gives good advice to young people. It is a pity that he has not formally become a Christian and so remains an outsider.

Paul Kingsnorth belongs to the Romanian Orthodox Church, like us. Clearly, he is new to the Faith and says many of the things that recent converts say (I can remember thinking and saying the same things fifty years ago). However, because he is a writer and a speaker, he has a gift and can explain his approach to the Faith to those outside the Church. So he is a very good missionary and avoids excesses, like some misguided converts.

Q: What happens to those who get rebaptised?

A: I know one young man, who had never been baptised and then was baptised into the Orthodox Church. Unsatisfied, despite the warning words of the Creed, he then got rebaptised by an ‘Orthodox’ sect. Six months later he got rebaptised by yet another ‘Orthodox’ sect (total worldwide membership – six). Two years on, he now never goes to church. It is clear that his approach to baptism was ‘magical’, and the need to get baptised came from his pathological state, not from any spiritual reason. In fact, the priest who baptised him the first time, warned him that if he got rebaptised, he would lapse from the Church. So it always is.

Q: What do you think of the fact that the new Archbishop of Canterbury is a woman?

A: It is nothing to do with us. We have never been members of that religious group and, like 95% of English people, know little about it. All we can see is that it was founded by the murderous Henry VIII, so he could give himself a divorce, and that today it is an overpaid woke laughing-stock. What I do know and care about is that that there are Orthodox bishops who are not women, but who are either financially corrupt, or else sexual perverts, who form ‘lavender mafias’, or else they are both.

Q: Would you take part in anti-abortion marches?

A: I am of course opposed to abortion, as are all Orthodox Christians. Ten years ago, we had a Russian ROCOR parishioner who wanted to abort a child – she already had two children. Although it took some effort, I persuaded her to keep the child and the Church gave her £2,000 to help her with costs. Today she has a lovely little girl, now ten years old, and her parents are very happy with their decision. This is being anti-abortion practically, and not demonstrating politically in the street.

That only has negative effects, which is why I am opposed to political activism. First of all, it is a waste of time and has no effect. Secondly, it is part of a political ideology (right-wing in this case), encouraged by some clerics who are sexual perverts. Thirdly, it seems to be prevalent among converts from Catholicism and Protestantism. When not naïve, they can at times be immature, self-admiring, self-satisfied, self-important, self-righteous, middle-class, priggish, who want to advertise themselves. Others are sometimes closet homosexuals, misogynists because they are unhappy alone, and can be extremist and hateful. I would not encourage them.

Q: I have heard the statement that ‘the similarity between the bodies of apes and human-beings shows that they have a common ancestor’. What would you reply?

A: The similarity between the human body and the bodies of most animals, two eyes, two ears, one nose, one mouth, four limbs and similar internal organs, proves only that we were all made by the same God.

Church Life

Q: Are there different types of priest?

A: Most definitely. There are three types of priest. The first is the careerist, an ‘apparatchik’, as the Russians call him, they are the yesmen who climb the rungs of the clerical ladder and are desperate for awards. The second type are kindly and moderate, good and popular priests.

Finally, there is the third type, those who are touched by the Holy Spirit and the spirit of prophecy. It is best not to touch them and try and make them fit into some religious system or careerism. You cannot control them. The Holy Spirit does not fit into manmade religious systems. Bishops rise and fall according to how they treat such priests.

Such was the case with St John of Kronstadt, who did not receive any priestly awards for decades and only became rector of his huge church after forty years because of the jealousy of his bureaucrat-metropolitan! Such was the case also with the future St John of Shanghai, who was also persecuted by similar bishops. There are ignorant bishops who persecute and despise the saints. We know who they are.

Q: Which Local Church is going to be at the root of founding the new Autocephalous Church of Western Europe?

A: Between 1985 and 1988, I had briefly thought that Constantinople could perhaps do it, as the Russian Church was still divided and enslaved to the Communist regime. Then, in summer 1988, I clearly saw official Greek nationalism and corruption.

After 2003 and the words of Patriarch Alexei II promising such a new Local Church – and he grew up in Estonia – I thought it would be the Russian Church that could do it. After many doubts and setbacks after 2016 especially, by 2021 I saw that this was definitively not going to happen, as the Russian Church had fallen into Non-Christian centralism with its virulent nationalism and ghetto mentality, clearly refusing to give any other nationality autocephaly.

The Russian Church clearly and openly turned its back on Orthodox England and Orthodox Europe, precisely on 4 February 2022. That was a historic moment. Now it is isolated and is losing the Ukraine, Moldova and the Baltics, as well as the Diaspora, all because of its centralist refusal to grant anyone autocephaly, which is its refusal for nationalist reasons to do missionary work. It is the path it has chosen, to its loss.

Today we have a situation where, with rare exceptions, the Greek Church is only for Greeks, the Russian only for Russians, the Serbian only for Serbs, the tiny numbers of Bulgarians and Georgians are also nationally exclusive, Antioch is only for the tiny numbers of disappointed Anglicans, Protestants and Evangelicals, and the new ROCOR is only for the few pathological convert fanatics. Only the Romanians are left.

I look back with gratitude to the moment when all our parishes were forced to join the Romanian Church by the ROCOR schism (and real schisms are always preceded by heresy, which in their case was the Donatism of the past. You should never return to your first errors, but learn from them). That was a time above all of liberation and relief, not of abandonment and treachery. Our local Archbishop, who is Moldovan, has as his main interest precisely Autocephaly, the theme of his doctorate. This is Providence. In the future, Russians will look back on this moment with horrified regret at their historic error.

Britain

Q: Iranians call the USA ‘the Great Satan’ and England ‘the Little Satan’. What would you say about that?

A: I would make a correction: ‘The Little Satan’ is not England, but Norman England, which is usually called ‘Britain’.

Q: Should Britain have taken part in World War One?

A: Definitely not! Though too late, that huge error was made. I blame Sir Edward Grey for his warmongering and secret promises. If it had not been done, we may not have seen either Hitler or Stalin, let alone all the rest.

Q: Should we pay other countries compensation for the crimes of the British Empire?

A: Who is we? We, the people, never had any idea what was being done abroad by the elites. It is only today when the old, load-bearing, national propaganda myths are collapsing that the people are discovering to their horror what had been done for centuries behind their backs. The asset-stripping both inside the country and abroad were acts of London merchants/businessmen soon after the Reformation. That asset-stripping was reinforced after the merchants took full power through Cromwell and the Dutch and German rulers whom they brought in after Cromwell. The only case for compensation that can be made is for the descendants of those elites to be forced to pay some sort of compensation, provided that they are still benefiting from the criminal acts of their ancestors.

Chisinau, 7 October 2025

 

From Feast to Feast: Nine Days in the Life of

Saturday 20 September

Today, the third Saturday of the month, we have our monthly English liturgy. As usual, the Liturgy is held in the little church and takes only one hour, ending at 10.20, though I do give a long instructional talk of 20 minutes afterwards. Then those who came, a mixture of English parishioners and Russian parishioners with their children – the parents want their children to understand the Liturgy – have tea together in the meeting room. We mix with those who attend the Saturday Russian School which takes place later in another room.

Sunday 21

I arrive at church, as usual, at about 7.15 am. Preparation and the Proskomidia take one and a half hours. We have many tens of thousands of names to commemorate, so we can only pray for all the names once a year. The second priest arrives at 7.30, but has to go to the hospital to give communion to a very sick elderly woman. He is back at 8.30. Then confessions begin at 8.45 with all three priests available and the two deacons helping. The Liturgy begins more or less on time at 9.20. After the Liturgy, I have a Russian memorial service, a Moldovan baptism, and then there are people to see individually. I get home at 3.30.

Monday 22

Today I am visiting Count and Countess Benckendorff at their rose-gardened thatched home in Suffolk. We have not seen one another for a good discussion for several months. First, we discuss what we need to do for next Sunday (see below). Countess Benckendorff will prepare some white roses (white because they are White Russians) for the graves, where the parish has erected new wooden crosses after nearly 100 years. Above all we speak of our favourite topic, the future of Russia and the Russian Church, against the background of the latest news from Russia.

Although both Benckendorffs were born, brought up and worked in the Soviet Union, they have worked through and understood the problems of the last century of Russian history. They are both appalled by the present civil war in the Ukraine and how the West has sponsored it against the interests of both peoples. But the peoples themselves are also responsible. We agree that all this horror is the result of the aftermath of both waves of Westernisation, the Marxist-Soviet one before the 1990s and, from the 1990s on, the Capitalist one of the oligarchs. Both were the result of the Western-organised regime change operation in 1917, known falsely as ‘The Russian Revolution’, that we should rather call ‘The Russian Degeneration’.

As regards the Military Operation in the east and south of the old Soviet Ukraine, it has always been clear to us from the outset that giant Russia would win militarily against small Ukraine, even with full NATO backing, rather as if in a conflict between Germany and Belgium, it would be clear that Germany would win, however much Belgium was backed by outside meddlers. However, from the outset it has equally always been clear that the Russian Church would lose. A Church, one third of whose members are Non-Russians, has lost one third of its members and been turned into an ever more centralised, clericalised and militarised ghetto, hostile to the people and to the spiritual. The violent and conscious rejection of Non-Russians and the Orthodox mission to Western Europe by the now nationalist Russian Church hierarchy for purely political reasons has been its huge loss.

Both the Count and Countess have a great fondness for their distant cousin, Count Paul Benckendorff, brother of Count Alexander, the last Imperial ambassador at the Court of St James (London). Count Paul was very close to the martyred Tsar, ready to die for him, and wrote the book ‘Last Days at Tsarskoe Selo.’ Their view is that in 1917 Russia committed suicide, betrayed by its corrupt aristocracy, the oligarchs of that age, and it still has not recovered from that suicide, even though we are now advancing on the road to recovery, especially compared to fifty years ago.

This can be seen very clearly in the Russian Church hierarchy, as it goes from one scandal to another, to the despairing patience of the faithful clergy and people, more and more of whom are boycotting it, as they have been let down. There is far to go to restore the original Russian Church, as it was before Peter I, the ensuing bureaucratisation and increased ritualisation. The problem is not that the State persecutes the Church or forces it into obedience, it is people inside the Church who think that the Church must imitate the State, just as in the Church of England.

Another thing we agree on is that the decadence in Russia in 1917 was shown by the fact that people no longer took communion, at best, only once a year, often indeed never after baptism. In effect, by 1917 Russia had fallen out of communion with Christ and into the ritualism of the pharisees who can express only hatred. Here is how the leaders of the once persecuted Church became persecutors.

Tuesday 23

Today I bless the home of an English Orthodox family in Bury St Edmunds. Afterwards N. comments that the alien British Establishment want us to rejoin the Globalist EU project (did we ever leave it?), continue the greedy Globalists’ war in the Ukraine in order to exploit all its natural resources, and increasingly control and censor us as they are authoritarians. N. adds that ‘the present Prime Minister claims that we have free speech and if anyone disagrees with him, they will be arrested’. I suggest that all may change, once the leaders of Germany, the UK and France fall, since they are all extremely unpopular, indeed are hated.

I listen to him with a smile, but change the subject to history and say how the problem of Western Europe is that it was conquered by barbarians like the Franks, Vikings and Normans.  As a result, the twentieth century was patterned by the descendants of these barbarians with their barbarian World Wars, fighting against neo-pagans – Communists and Nazis.

In the afternoon I collect the up-to-date statistics for our Church in Western Europe. Our two bishops in the British Isles and Ireland now have dioceses of 119 priests and 19 deacons in 95 parishes and 5 monasteries. We are part of the two Autonomous Metropolias of Western Europe, of Western and Southern Europe, and Central and Northen Europe. They include even our parishes and missions in Finland, the Faeroes, Iceland and Greenland. We now have 10 bishops, 859 parish churches and 30 monasteries, with the number of churches increasing regularly.

We have come a long way from the days of liturgies in front rooms and sheds, with 10-20 huddlers in the catacomb churches of the 1970s. When there were more than 25 people present, they would say: ‘There were a lot of people at church today!’ However, these conditions still endure in the present Russian Church in the Diaspora, which still suffers so grievously from its past errors. Thus, the Russian Church in the Diaspora (ROCOR) may have up to 300 parishes altogether, but only about 50 of them have more than 100 parishioners for Sunday liturgies. Most have between 10 and 40 mainly converts. But we are now in the normal mainstream, in churches that have hundreds of parishioners present every Sunday.

Fr Ioan Nazarcu, our old friend, whom we have known for 15 years, and for some years now has been a priest, has just given the Economist magazine an interview. Although this Rothschild magazine is atheist in ideology, Fr Ioan, whose English is excellent, has been able to give them a first-rate interview.

https://www.economist.com/britain/2025/09/22/the-orthodox-church-is-thriving-in-britain-thanks-to-immigration

Wednesday 24

Today I have my day off and am at home, dealing with domestic matters and building work. 

Thursday 25

Today I bless a Ukrainian-Moldovan home in Basildon near east London. The parents are worried about transgender propaganda at school and are thinking of returning to Moldova to protect their children from it. I stop at church to get everything ready for the feast on Saturday. It takes me two hours. Then I bless the home of a Russian family in Colchester and stay for tea and conversation. They have just returned from Moscow, which is now very vibrant and generally more prosperous than Western cities, which have so many social problems and suffer from litter, graffiti and potholed roads and pavements.

Friday 26

Today I am seeing Moldovan and Romanian parishioners in Stowmarket in Suffolk and in Diss across the border in Norfolk. I will not make it to the canon this evening in Colchester, where 30-40 Romanian parishioners gather more or less every Friday evening or sometimes at midnight for a Liturgy. Fr Ioan will, as always, cope very well.

Saturday 27

Today is the Feast of the Exaltation for our Russian, Ukrainian and Moldovan parishioners. About 50 people are in church. Afterwards I baptise an adult Russian. 

Sunday 28

 I head to church at 6.45. After the Liturgy, we have the meeting of St Alban’s Circle, our youth group. About sixty people attend. The subject is the life of St John of Shanghai. Meanwhile, Fr Ioan is doing baptisms in the main church, while Fr Sergey has a memorial service in the little church. At 1.20, I leave for Claydon cemetery outside Ipswich and the graves of Countess and Count Benckendorff, wife and son of the last Imperial ambassador, Count Alexander. They are distant cousins of the present Benckendorffs. People place roses on the graves of Countess Sophia, Count Konstantine and his wife Maria Korchinska. I get home at 3.30

At home I have to start getting ready for my pilgrimage to Moldova and Romania from 6 to 17 October.

 

 

Orthodox Pray in Our Own Church in Dublin

The Church of St John of Shanghai in Colchester was built in 1855 and is the largest wooden church in the British Isles and Ireland. St John’s is attended annually by 5,000 Orthodox of 25 nationalities. It has two altars, three priests of different nationalities, two deacons and Sunday attendance is between 200 and 400.  It is administered by the East of England Orthodox Church Trust (Charity No. 1081707), centred in the City of Colchester, which cares for our Deanery of seven multinational Orthodox parishes in Colchester, the East of England and beyond.

St John’s is a parish of the Romanian Orthodox Archdiocese of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, part of the Autonomous Orthodox Metropolia of Western and Southern Europe with its Synod of 7 bishops and over 900 parish churches and many monasteries. Our rapidly expanding Archdiocese  already has 108 priests and 17 deacons in 95 parishes and 5 monasteries, as Vladica Atanasie ordains our many candidates throughout Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Next to us, however, with Bishop Nectarie of Ireland and Iceland there are another 10 parishes and 15 priests and his Diocese has had wonderful news:

https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/social-affairs/2025/09/14/miracle-from-god-romanian-orthodox-community-gathers-in-newly-purchased-cathedral/

 

 

‘There is No Grace Outside the Orthodox Church’. True or False?

The very fact that the above statement is sometimes made displays either ignorance of the rudiments of our Faith, or else a pathological state. The latter by definition quenches the Holy Spirit, Who is the source of grace. And yet the statement is widespread among the tiny numbers of pseudo-Orthodox sectarians who are not and do not wish to be in communion with the Orthodox Church, known as ‘old calendarists’, Greek, Bulgarian, Romanian, Serbian and Russian. The Russians are from the Russian Old Calendarists Outside Russia, who are now struggling to overcome their latest pedophile scandal.

Such old calendarists, perhaps 75% of them in the USA, number some 10,000 individuals and are divided into some 20 different tiny sects, which are constantly warring with each other. In this they resemble the various warring Protestant sects, which comes as no surprise as most old calendarists are ex-Protestants. They enjoy telling each other and others, that they ‘will go to hell’, as they are possessed by the spirit of pharisaic condemnation. This is the darkness of every Spiritless and so Loveless human ideology, which stems from demonic pride. Such pride is founded on praise of self by condemning others.

In this way they feel superior to others, their hearts swollen with self-loving pride, as they have deprived themselves of the Holy Spirit and so of humility. They fail to understand the basic theological truth that we are saved only by Divine Mercy, never by any narrow human ideologies, which are always founded on the absence of love, that is, on hatred. The pharisees ignore the words of Christ, that ‘the wind (Spirit) blows where it wishes’ (Jn. 3, 8) and of the Creed: ‘I believe in the Holy Spirit…Who spoke by the Prophets’. These words clearly disprove the human ideology that there is no grace outside the Church.

Denying these words, the human ideologists of exclusive grace, that grace belongs to them only, declare that Christ was lying, that the Prophets were not saved, including the Forerunner John, the last Old Testament and first New Testament Prophet, was not saved, and nor was the Mother of God, at least for the first 33 years of her life. They deny that the Spirit can blow and call people into the Church, like the Jews before Christ spoke to them, like the Archangel-visited Inuits before St Innocent came to them. And such is their anti-historical sense and hatred that they condemn generations even of their own ancestors.

St Sophrony the Athonite explained Orthodox theology to us nearly fifty years ago, in 1978, before many of the saint-denying, ‘Orthodox’ sectarians were even born. This followed a scandal on Mt Athos. Orthodox sacramental theology is clear, he said. The sacramental forms outside the Orthodox Church are not sacraments, but rites. The sacramental potential of those rites is only activated by the grace that comes from contact with the Church. Thus, there is no need to repeat the rite. Anything that is ritually deficient (single immersion or splashing instead of triple immersion, for example) is covered by the grace of the Church.

The fact that people come to the Church is proof that the Church transmits (non-sacramental) grace outside of Herself, the free and direct grace of the Holy Spirit. However, that grace cannot be maintained in the world without the support of the grace from the sacraments, that is, sacramental grace. This explains the age-old and universal (except among the new, US, pseudo-Russian old calendarists) practice of the canonical Russian Church of receiving Catholics by confession and communion. Certainly, when I was in the old ROCOR, I received Catholics thus, in faithfulness to the practices of the old, Russian ROCOR.

As an Orthodox prison chaplain, I am in constant contact with Orthodox thieves, fraudsters, rapists and even murderers. They are all baptised Orthodox Christians. Do these then have grace, whereas my fellow-chaplains, Catholic or Protestant and other good, but Non-Orthodox, people, have no grace? This is absurd and reveals only that the old calendarists have no knowledge and experience of life in their gloomy and negative ghettoes, where apparently the Sun does not shine. They are victims of their own ideology of censorious, accusatory and sectarian judgementalism, so self-isolated from the Church.

Those who deny the presence of any grace outside the Church, deny that the Church is like the Sun – it shines on all, the righteous and the wicked alike. Those who deny this, limit God, taking over His role as the Only Giver of grace of the Holy Spirit, Who proceeds from the Father, and not from old calendarist schismatics. No ‘infallible’ Pope, of Rome or of any other Western Capital, can dispose of the Holy Spirit. All such bishops are literally ‘disGraceful’. In the homelands of Orthodoxy, ancient homelands as in Western Europe, or modern homelands as in Eastern Europe and West Asia, we know this from experience.