Tag Archives: The Pastoral Crisis

Q and A: August-September 2026

The Holy Spirit

Q: I am a Catholic and as I understand it, the Orthodox Churches have no Pope, because Orthodox consider that their Churches are governed by the Holy Spirit. If that is so, why are there conflicts between those Churches?

A: A good question! As Metropolitan Antony (Khrapovitsky) of Kiev put it 125 years ago: ‘The Holy Spirit rules the Church, but bishops get in the way’. In other words, all the problems in all the Local Churches are due to ‘Pneumatoclasm’, the struggle against the Holy Spirit, ‘quenching the Spirit’, in the language of the Scriptures. There are bishops who do not want the Holy Spirit, they want only to be ‘princes of the Church’, that is, to possess power and riches and they persecute the faithful to get this. Such are politicians and not pastors. However, whenever you reject the Holy Spirit, you end up being exactly like the worst of Roman Catholicism (not your sort), whatever the rite you use, for example like ‘Greek Catholic’ Uniatism, which uses a similar rite to Orthodox, but is not Orthodox in spirit, only in outward imitation.

Thus, medieval Roman Catholic cardinals, political powerbrokers, become the model for such ‘princes of the Church’. One Russian metropolitan in the 1970s even died in the arms of a Pope and several Greek metropolitans, usually issued with a doctorate from the Gregorian University in Rome, whatever their abilities, seem to spend more time in Rome than in their diocese – if they have one. In other words, the worst of Roman Catholicism is the default position for Orthodox who reject the Holy Spirit. That is why we do not confess Roman Catholicism.

However, do not be offended. As I said, this comparison applies to the worst of Roman Catholicism, and we know that there is also the best of Roman Catholicism. The Vatican machine is inherently secular because of its filioque theology, in which the Pope replaces Christ, Who for them is the source of the Holy Spirit. And that is exactly what such Orthodox confess, Orthodoxy without the Holy Spirit, that is, a mere rite.

The Orthodox Churches and the Diaspora

Q: Is there a limit to the number of Local Orthodox Churches?

A: No, of course not. For example, some six generations ago there were only 8 Local Churches, whereas today there are 16. This was because conglomerate empires broke up and new countries formed. In years to come there could be a maximum of 27 Local Churches. That number would depend on many things, for example, on the first if – if the Russian Church granted autocephaly, or else just autonomy with the right not to commemorate the Patriarch, to the Orthodox in other countries who are still dependent on its jurisdiction. And it would also depend on the willingness of all the Local Churches concerned to give autocephaly to their restless Diasporas.

Thus, the figure of 27 Local Churches would only be reached if the Church of Greece returned to Constantinople (they were quite uncanonically forced to separate by the British and the Bavarians in 1833), making 15 Local Churches, and if the Church in Moscow granted autocephaly to the Orthodox Churches on its canonical territory, in the Post-Ukraine (whatever its new name and borders will be), in Belarus, Carpatho-Rus and All Hungary, the Baltics (Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), Japan, China (vital if ever the mission is to take off there, as China will not allow foreign-based organisations, just like the Baltic States) and in Central Asia (= the five stans), making 22 Local Churches, and if all the Local Churches concerned could organise themselves and collectively grant autocephaly to Moldova (this would need the co-operation of Moscow and Bucharest), Western Europe, Latin America, Mexico-Central America-the Caribbean, and Oceania, making 27 in all. A lot of ifs.

Indeed, there are even more ifs, because for such a missionary movement to take place, first the Soviet-founded Moscow Patriarchate, would have to give up its centralised Soviet organisation, perhaps renaming itself ‘the Patriarchate of New Jerusalem’, the Soviet-founded OCA would have to become genuinely inter-Orthodox, perhaps its territory being clearly defined and being renamed the Northern American Orthodox Church (NAOC), and the Greek Churches would have to give up their no less imperialistic attitudes, creating a real Patriarchate for Africans with African bishops with the symbolic title of Alexandria, returning the Patriarchate of Jerusalem to the Palestinians, recognising the Macedonian Orthodox Church, and appointing new, CIA-free First Hierarchs in Greece and Cyprus. Even more ifs.

Q: How could Russians and Greeks get back into communion?

A: Why could the Russians not restore communion with the Greeks everywhere, except in Estonia and the Ukraine, where the Greeks have behaved like schismatics? Here is the beginning of a solution to your question. The rest would be up to the Greeks, who began all this mess.

Q: How can the various parts of the Diaspora be joined together, especially in view of the current enmity between Greeks and Russians?

A: Clearly, men do not want unity, they prefer disunity because they are absorbed not by Christ, but by nationalist politics, which are always divisive. I suppose the only answer to this question is to say, ‘Unity is only possible by the grace of God’.

As regards Orthodoxy in Great Britain, there are some glimmers of hope after first the Greeks messed up through their nationalism in the last quarter of the last century and then the Russians messed up through their nationalism in the first quarter of this century. Take, for example, the parish of Durham. It went through the Greeks, then the Russians, and nothing worked. Today it thrives under the Romanians. The same is true of all the parishes that left the American ROCOR schism in 2022 to join the Romanian Patriarchate, having received canonical letters of leave from the Moscow Patriarchate to do so.

Take monasticism. Over the last fifty years there have been countless, divisive, eccentric priests of all jurisdictions who have tried to set up monasteries without first having been a novice and monk in someone else’s monastery! They all failed, closed down and sold up, and ended up as lonely old men living alone. True, Tolleshunt Knights has prospered, but since the repose of St Sophrony it has greatly changed. ROCOR used to have a small monastery in Brookwood and a convent in London, but, like so many other unconverted converts in ROCOR, they both ended up in an old calendarist sect and the convent died out.

Only the Romanians have a monastery and a convent, all in English, separately in Mull and Iona, under Archimandrite Seraphim Aldea. The Church moves forward! I cannot help feeling that our Romanian Church can provide the glue here to bring all the divided Orthodox together. For 47 years we laboured in the missionary field in the highly politicised Russian Church. We received mainly discouragement, persecution, humiliation, bullying, betrayal, isolation, jealousy, hatred, pathological sectarian nastiness and never received a single apology! In the Romanian Church we have only ever received positivity, encouragement and thankful appreciation. What a difference! Night and day.

Q: Why are we Orthodox not in communion with Catholics and Protestants?

A: You mean, why are Catholics and Protestants not in communion with the Orthodox Churches, that is, with the members of the Orthodox Churches? Put simply, it is because those people fell away from the Orthodox Christian Faith, by changing the Creed and so falling out of communion with the Orthodox Churches, the Churches of the Councils and the Fathers.

By abandoning the Faith, they became Catholics and some of those later became Protestants. Put very crudely, Catholicism replaced the Holy Spirit with the Bishop of Rome, the Patriarch of the West. And Protestantism replaced the Pope with everyone. Everyone is a Pope for them. If Protestants do not like one of the tens of thousands of Protestant denominations, all they have to do is to start their own, becoming its Pope.

Of course, this does not mean that we cannot be good neighbours with the mass of Catholics and Protestants, whose leaders took them away from the Orthodox Faith. Like their ancestors, they themselves are quite unconscious of this. We judge no-one. We have to save ourselves first of all, God will look after others. We do not interfere, bully and busybody in the lives of others.

Q: Can you have Non-Orthodox godparents at an Orthodox baptism? I have been searching for a church that allows this and cannot find one.

A: I was brought up in the old Russian ROCOR. And our universal practice was to insist that the godmother of a girl be Orthodox and the godfather of a boy be Orthodox. This means that the godfather of a girl and the godmother of a boy do not absolutely have to be Orthodox, providing that they have been baptised by water in the Name of the Holy Trinity, for example, if they are Roman Catholics or Anglicans.

Of course, the new fanatical convert ROCOR has abandoned this Tradition, which is that of the Tsar’s Orthodox Church, which we belong to. Its abandonment of the Tradition is the new ROCOR’s problem.

Convertitis

Q: Why have there been problems with converts?

A: There are two types of converts. The first type is converted converts. These are called ‘Orthodox’. The second type, a very small but noisy minority, consists of unconverted converts. And there are problems with them, especially if they have been made priests and, far worse, bishops, because they are pathological, not theological. They bring impurity, known as sectarianism, either of the left or of the right, into the Church.

Q: What is Protestant Orthodoxy?

A: This concerns Diaspora unconverted converts with a Protestant/sectarian mentality. They may be in any jurisdiction, though the two jurisdictions that have mostly lost their connections with their homelands are far more concerned than others. Protestant Orthodoxy attracts pathological case extremists, who think they are being ‘more Orthodox than the Orthodox’. Unfortunately, some of these Protestant Orthodox, without experience or seminary training, have been made priests and even, one or two, bishops. There they form sects within the Church because they do not want to belong to the Church and live a Christian life. They want to belong to a sect and curse others, feeling self-justified, their hearts swelling with priggish self-admiration.

I remember one such small group in Paris in the early 80s. They all dressed in black and when they visited a normal Russian ROCOR parish, the Russians called them ‘the crows’. They left into schism in 1987.

Protestant Orthodox, ‘Orthobros’, are characterised by long beards and long hair, extreme fasting, personality cults, fanaticism towards Non-Orthodox, and sectarian jealousy and hatred towards normal Orthodox. Whatever their jurisdiction, such unconverted converts also believe in rebaptism. This is most insulting to others and to the Holy Spirit. He gathers all who wish into the Church, including those who have already been baptised by water in the Name of the Holy Trinity.

These people do not want to belong to the Church, they want to belong to a sect. They just use the Church as an excuse to shield and justify their sectarian pride. It is all pathology instead of theology. If it is a permanent pathology, then such people will remain for decades, though always in sectarian groups on the fringes of the Church. If it is a temporary spiritual affliction, then such people will soon burn out, like flames which flare up as they burn paper and burn out when the fuel has been consumed, leaving only ashes.

Q: What do you think of the convert movement in the West today?

A: The present convert movement began with the pandemic. For me it is all a repeat of the convert movement of the 1970s. I have seen it all before, the same problems, the same questions, the same anxieties, the same insecurities and the same lapses. For example, at that time in this country, in 1976, there was the scandal of the Guildford rebaptisms, when Russian Orthodox were rebaptised by a newly Americanised ROCOR (the US-trained Ukrainian priest responsible was soon after defrocked); that has now been repeated. The same old absurd controversies and doubts, ridiculous at the time, are now being repeated, with ex-Catholic and ex-Protestant converts being nasty to Catholics and Protestants. It is all very tiresome and lacks love. Some people never learn.

Q: How did the ROCOR, which during the period of the persecution of the Faith in the USSR was so widely respected for its confession of the Faith against the inability of Moscow to canonise the New Martyrs and Confessors and rejected canonical compromises, fall away from the Orthodox Church?

A: The downfall of ROCOR came after the move of its Synod from Europe to the USA and then its CIA infiltration, ensuing politically-motivated convert pride and greed for dollars. It was tragic, because as the late lamented Metr Kallistos (Ware) truly observed, ROCOR’s task was to keep and spread the liturgical and ascetic heritage of the Tsar’s Church, taking a lead in uniting the future new Local Churches in the Diaspora through that heritage. But instead of uniting, the new ROCOR divided, disobeying God’s Will.

They lost their organic roots in the Russian Church. They were absolutely sure of themselves because they cut themselves off from the sources of the Faith, from the traditional clergy and people. Even when what they were doing was so obviously wrong to all, they did not heed the views of their clergy or of others, for as ‘princes of the Church’ they considered that they had a sort of feudal power by Divine right and could trample on everyone, pumping out as much money as they wanted from the parishes, charging 10 euros per person per month or establishing Televangelist-style, Old Testament tithing! Thus, ROCOR the Persecuted Church became ROCOR the Persecuting Church, the Church of the Confessors and Martyrs became the Church that creates Confessors and Martyrs.

And so after the official reconciliation with the Mother-Church in 2007, key CIA elements in American ROCOR double-crossed Moscow (how naïve they are in Moscow, just like President Putin used to be), there gradually appeared a schismatic Russian-American sect. By 2021 there had appeared a ghetto, out of communion with all, which rebaptises other Orthodox against the words of the Creed. It also takes Moscow to court over the possession of its church property in France and like a spoilt child with a tantrum threatens to leave communion with Moscow if the latter opposes it!!

One of the guilty actually publicly proclaimed that Patriarch Bartholomew is ‘possessed’, and that this ROCOR recent convert ‘doesn’t like Romanians and only half-likes Moldovans’. And so they broke communion with the Moscow Patriarchate. So declared in public one responsible for Inter-Orthodox relations…

He surrounded himself with a few jealous yesmen, who had not achieved anything as missionaries and did not even speak Russian, who only added to his spiritual blindness. Just wanting to take over the property belonging to others, described by a solicitor as ‘a property grab’, he made false accusations, even trying to force others to Americanise their speech, because he did not know any other languages. Russians had to depend on the corrupt Moldovans, whom no-one else wanted for obvious reasons.

He received multiple clergy from other Patriarchates without canonical releases, but then ‘defrocked’ the clergy of another Patriarchate which had received clergy with canonical releases issued by the Moscow Patriarchate! That was an uncanonical act of gratuitous nastiness, not worthy of a Christian. His ‘defrockings’ were of course done by autopen, just like Biden!

The ever smaller ROCOR has made itself spiritually and administratively irrelevant. How are the once mighty fallen! All we can hope and pray is that the still traditional Orthodox elements in ROCOR, and there are still some there, though only just hanging on, will ‘walk it back’, repenting and returning to canonicity and the Russian Orthodox Faith and Church, overcoming their schisms.

I think also ROCOR will have to review its practice of ordaining neophytes (recent converts) priests and consecrating them bishops, which is against the canons. It should also give up stealing clergy from other Local Churches without letters of canonical leave. It just does not work, as can be seen from the present disasters, when it is out of communion with the Russian Church, the Romanian Church and the Greek Churches. This puts it outside communion with 99% + of the Orthodox Church.

Thus, from being an irrelevant marginal sect of ‘Protestant Orthodox’ extremists, aggressive and arrogant ‘Orthobros’, out of communion with all, some could return to communion with the Orthodox Churches and so become spiritually relevant again. For now, it has painted itself into a corner and ignores the goodwill of others, just like Trump!

Q: Why are some converts so moralising?

A: The disease of moralism always comes when there is no spirituality. Spiritual people always have compassion. Like St Silouan, but all real Orthodox. Those who are not compassionate are called pharisees. They love condemning others, because that gives them a feeling of self-justification, self-righteousness and leads directly to sectarianism.

I saw it widely among French converts around the late Fr Placide Deseille in the Greek Church in France thirty-five years ago, saw it again among some French converts on Mt Athos recently (clearly the Greek monks did not know what to do with them) and here in the last twenty years in the Antochian and Greek Churches and ROCOR, though only among converts from Protestantism. Those who are infected are all fairly recent converts and have no spiritual experience, just book knowledge. Fifty years ago the disease was modernism and ecumenism among the episcopate. Now it is this very ugly and anti-spiritual phariseeism. The other extreme.

Such people love long beards and dressing up in big cassocks, in which they go shopping. It gives them the imagined feeling of superiority to others. In reality all it leads to is others either mocking them or else insulting them as ‘weirdos’ and ‘beardy weirdies’. It certainly attracts nobody at all to the Church. This disease is delusional and stems from convert pride. Such people accuse others of their own sins in self-justifying hatefulness. They do not confess Orthodoxy, but ‘Orthodoxism’.

These people have nothing to do with Christianity and spend their time in tiny, incestuous (usually, all-male) ghettoes on the internet and in zooms. They want to be isolated in irrelevant little fringe groups of ‘holy huddlers’. They do not live with ordinary Orthodox or anyone, cutting themselves off, and even do not dress like us. They want their own uniform, their own strange universe. They do not want to come to the Liturgy, but only to ‘coffee hour’. It is a repeat of what went on in California in the 1970s. It all ended up badly. You know them by their fruits.

Q: Would you ever take part in an anti-abortion march?

A: I do not personally take part in political demonstrations, but if laypeople wish to take part in such an event, I would not withhold my blessing. However, I am personally concerned by the middle-class phariseeism and priggish self-righteous moralism that sometimes accompanies that movement. For example, the only ‘practising’ Orthodox I have met in Western Europe who carried out an abortion were two very respected Russian lay members of ROCOR. If a girl is pregnant, help her financially, take her into your home so she can have her baby. Stop condemning others in self-righteous pride. The other problem is that Roman Catholics who dominate such marches are against any form of contraception, in obedience to their Pope. Orthodox have different views.

The Orthodox anti-abortion movement consists of giving practical help to pregnant women who are tempted to have an abortion for financial reasons. No condemnation, no judgement, just show them love. Put your money where your mouth is. Otherwise, it is all too easy. This is what the ever-memorable Archbishop Antony of Geneva said and did, saving a child from abortion by adopting her.

Q: What is the origin of long beards for clergy?

A: Christ was bearded, so clergy are bearded. However, if you look at icons of Christ, He did not have a long beard. Look at icons of St John Chrysostom or St Ambrose of Milan, they had short beards too, again in honour of Christ. Long beards, and also long hair, came in with hermits from the Egyptian desert. Monks had long beards and long hair, because they had no way of shaving or even trimming them, so these were signs of unworldliness.

In the Russian Church, which was created by Greek and Bulgarian monks, monastic influence was so strong that not only monks, but also married priests and even laymen usually had long beards and sometimes long hair. However, in other Local Churches, where there is a parish tradition as well as a monastic tradition, it has always been common for married clergy to have short or trimmed beards, indeed laymen almost always shave. Their wives do not want husbands with beards, especially long ones. We should not confuse monasticism with Orthodoxy in the world. Two different things, but newcomers to the Church often confuse them.

The Scriptures

Q: What is the difference between history and prehistory, from an Orthodox perspective? What do we make of what is left from prehistory, for example fossils? The archaeologist Graham Hancock also claims that the remains of prehistoric civilisations exist, for example, beneath the sea. What do you think?

A: Prehistory is the history of the Pre-Flood world, the world before the Flood of Noah. This is recorded in Chapters 3-6 of Genesis, between the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden and the Flood, which was followed by the Ice Age. The Flood happened in 3,252 BC, according to traditional Orthodox dating, in other words, nearly 5,300 years ago. Whatever date you prefer for the Flood, traditional or non-traditional, history is what happened after the Flood and we are all descended from the eight people who were on the Ark. As regards prehistory, fossils record its existence. There have been no fossils in history.

Is there anything human left from prehistory? Apart from the accounts of civilisation, agriculture, building and metalworking recorded in chapters 3-6 of Genesis between the Fall of Adam and the Flood of Noah, I don’t know. Hancock makes lots of claims, but there is no scientific proof that what he found as an amateur archaeologist is actually prehistoric. It all seems to be much more recent, or else natural, like the straight splitting of basalt, which is natural, not human. His dating appears to be wildly inaccurate, even if you do not accept traditional Orthodox dating.

I think in theory something may remain from prehistoric human civilisation, but so far there is no proof of it. The Flood was such a cataclysm that probably all human constructions that came before it was destroyed, or else was buried hundreds or thousands of feet beneath the present surface of the Earth.

Q: Did St Paul write the Epistle to the Hebrews?

A: No, the Holy Spirit wrote it, as He wrote all Scripture, that is why Scripture is called Holy. Those who read the Bible without the Holy Spirit commit idolatry. In the case of this Epistle and others, the Holy Spirit wrote through the heart, mind, will and hand of the Apostle Paul.

I know some German Protestants think otherwise, and that he was not the author, but their views relate to ideas thought up as recently as the sixteenth century. The Church goes back long before this, to Pentecost, the coming down of the Holy Spirit. Once again, their theory proves that you cannot understand Scripture without the Holy Spirit Who wrote it.

The West

Q: Are the barbarians at the gates of the West?

A: The barbarians are not at the gates of the West, the barbarians have been in control for a millennium, which is why ‘the West’ is a fake West – the True West came before them. The proof of this is in the Crusades, in the Inquisition, in ‘Wars of Religion’, in the massacres by Europeans in the New Worlds, accusing the ones they massacred of being ‘savages’, in two so-called ‘World’ Wars and in the Third One in the Ukraine today. We reject the barbarians and praise the saints instead. We will say that it is the saints who are at the gates, trying to bring the Barbarian West who sit in the seats of Western authority to repentance.

Personal

Q: What is your favourite Orthodox book?

A: The New Testament.

Q: What do you do if you are insulted as a priest?

A: You pray for those who insult you and walk away because they are sick in mind. The only time you stand up to them is if they insult the Church, and not yourself, by preaching heresy or schism, for example by refusing communion with the Church or practising rebaptism. Then you must defend the Orthodox Faith. We defend others, not ourselves.

Q: Who influenced you?

A: In all twelve Christian people have influenced me. In order these have been:

Joan Phillips, Harry Norman, Maud Saunders, Fr Raphael Noica (the only one who is still alive), an unknown priest and old lady in Krasnodar in 1976, who both shone with the Divine Light, Fr Lev Lebedev, Elder Seraphim of Belgorod, Elder Ephraim of Arizona (1979), Fr Alexei Knyazev, Archbishop George Tarasov, Archbishop Antony Bartoshevich, Fr Alexander Trubnikov (who mortgaged his own home in order to build a church), and Elder Nikolai Guryanov.

Q and A: The Ascension of the Lord 2024

Orthodox Christianity Before and After the Western Schism

Q: Was England Orthodox before 1066?

A: I think the question is misleading. Firstly, how can a country be Orthodox? Only people can be Orthodox. Secondly, what do you mean by Orthodox? Jewish? If you mean Orthodox Christian, then it is true that before 1066 English people could and did make pilgrimages to Jerusalem and New Rome (Constantinople) and elsewhere in the Orthodox Christian Roman Empire, of which they were by faith a part, and Greek clergy are recorded living in England at the same time. English people could and did take communion anywhere there, their priests concelebrating.

This concerned not least the exiled refugees from England who went to live there permanently after 1066. This was because all held the same Orthodox Christian Faith, East and West, despite different rituals and customs. Of course this was true not only of the faithful in England, but more or less true of the faithful anywhere in Western Europe, even after the Year 1000. In other words, Roman Catholicism did not exist as such at that time, though its origins can be traced back to about the Year 1000 and even some aspects of it right back to the end of the eighth century under ‘Charlemagne’, who wanted to revive pagan Rome. In fact, that was exactly what his spiritual descendants did so successfully.

Q: Which Local Church will take the leadership of the Orthodox Diaspora in Western Europe?

A: I don’t know. The Greeks rejected their golden chance to prove that they really are ‘Oecumenical’ during the very long years of the Soviet captivity between 1917 and 1992. Instead, they showed that they were only ‘Ecumenical’ and so compromised and discredited themselves. Next, between 2007 and 2020, the Russians were given the same golden chance to assume the leadership of the Diaspora. And they threw their golden chance away too, into the selfsame dustbin of nationalism. It was offered to them on a plate and they rejected it, just like the Greeks before them. To quote the suicidal words of the time pronounced by a very young and spiritually untried bishop from Moscow, which he said against those who belong to other Local Churches, but which in fact he said to his own loss: ‘Too bad for their souls’. So the ship of the Church locally for now continues to be rudderless.

Apologetics

Q: Why do we pray for the monarch or government and armed forces? They are generally a bunch of crooks.

A: You forget that we are Christians and so pray for our enemies! For example, the early Orthodox prayed for suchlike as the Emperor Nero. We must pray for our persecutors. I always do it. We are Christians. We always pray for the powers that be, including the armed forces, as the Apostle Paul instructs us (‘Honour the King’), and this is so that they do not do evil.

Q: How has the word Christian become so discredited?

A: The word Christian is generally used to express Roman Catholic or Protestant, only very rarely Orthodox Christian. Instead of that term they use ‘Eastern Orthodox’, as though Christ (the Head of our Church) were some exotic oriental guru. In other words, the word ‘Christian’ has been instrumentalised and even weaponised by the powers of this world.

For example, I am (Orthodox) Christian because I reject feudalism with its serfs, massacres and inquisitions (so cannot be Roman Catholic); I reject Imperialism with its slavery and exploitation (so cannot be Protestant); I reject Capitalism with its paid serfs, kept quiet with the bread, sugar and salt of supermarkets and circuses of TV and the internet (so cannot be Secularist). So are you a Christian?

However, there are also bad clergy in every part of the supposedly Christian world. They discredit the word ‘Christian’. For example, there is in Colchester a Polish taxi-driver. He had the same job when he lived in the Church city of Krakow in Poland. His job was to transport Catholic clergy and seminarians to prostitutes. This industry was well developed there. On the other hand, we have here a very nice Roman Catholic lady from eastern Poland near the border of Belarus, whose husband is Orthodox. He refuses to go to church because the priest in his Orthodox village is a drunkard, who steals money from the church and lives a dissolute life. That this exists is nothing new; Russia had many such priests before the Revolution and there are many in the Ukraine today. The only question is why such men are ordained by bishops and then NOT defrocked. It suggests that the bishops themselves are corrupt. And I certainly know cases of this. It is all about money.

Q: What do you think of Jordan Peterson as an Orthodox missionary and ‘the surge’ towards Orthodoxy?

A: This Non-Orthodox gentleman does not lead a Church life. He preaches an ideology. However interesting it may be and however sincere it may be and however close some of it may be to Orthodox views, it is not Orthodox Christianity because it is not living Orthodoxy. Thus, over the last years or so, I have been contacted as a priest by many young men (not a single woman), between the age of 16 and 40, who claim, under the influence of Jordan Peterson, they want ‘to become Orthodox’. When I have told them that they have to attend Church services for this to happen, they immediately lose all interest. In other words, they are in love with a podcast theory, ‘internet Orthodoxy’, not the Church. This is totally different from practice and reality.

There has been no surge towards Orthodoxy at all. I must add that some of those young men were very strange individuals, narcissistic, misogynistic, family-hating, sometimes, I suspect, repressed homosexuals and sometimes downright weird. I think they live in a virtual world of the fantasy, not the real one. It appears to be a generational problem, a result of the internet, a lack of contact with reality. Podcasts are not a Christian way of life. By their fruits, ye shall judge them.

Q: Why does the Bible not mention dinosaurs?

A: For the same reason that the Bible does not mention locomotives. Both words were invented about the same time in the 19th century. The books of the Old Testament were written down over 3,000 years before that. However, the Book of Job (40, 15-24) does mention a ‘behemoth’, with an exact description of a very large dinosaur (most dinosaurs were very small according to the fossil record). Elsewhere the Bible often mentions dragons and, in all the cultures and folk-memories of the world, dragons are the old name for dinosaurs.

Q: Was the Flood local or universal?

A: This is not a dogma of the Faith, so believe as you will. Personally, I think it was universal, because every culture in the world has a flood story and because how else can you account for worldwide fossils, 95% of which are sea creatures (for example, fossils of sea creatures found on high mountains), stratification of rock, plate tectonics, or the Ice Age? And then, if it had been global, why did Noah not simply move away from the area and why did he bother to preserve the animals anyway? Personally, I cannot imagine how a geologist cannot be a Christian.

Q: When was the Earth created and how long did it take?

A: Nobody knows. The traditional Orthodox date is 7,532 years ago. You can interpret that literally or figuratively. How long did it take? Six days or six ages. No such speculations, or even certain knowledge, helps us to salvation. Do not waste your time!

The Russian Church

Q: Why does the agony of the Russian Church continue even 33 years after the fall of Communism?

A: This is because of the lack or repentance of the Russian Orthodox masses, who are baptised but untaught. Thus, in the centre of Moscow the corpse of Lenin, that forerunner of Antichrist, continues to rot in public in its ziggurat. Everywhere statues of monsters like him and the names of the murderers are recalled in metro stations, streets and whole regions. Meanwhile the relics of the Imperial Martyrs are held, the faithful barred off, in Saint Petersburg and it is impossible for the faithful to venerate them. This is spiritual captivity. Relics make miracles only when they are venerated.

Q: Why was Gregory Rasputin hated by most of the Russian emigration?

A: This was because most of the Russian emigration hated the Tsar and the Tsarina. They blamed their loss of money, position and property on the Imperial Family and all who had supported them. In the words of St John of Shanghai (and also in my experience) only about 10% of the Russian emigration were for the Tsar or went to church, and probably far fewer than 10% of the aristocracy, who had lost the most through the Revolution. Although all the emigres have died out, this attitude continues among their descendants of the second, third and fourth generations, to whom they passed on their old prejudices.

Q: Why does the West hate Russia?

A: Simply because Russia has refused to be colonised by the West. True, it has not remained entirely independent. The Russian Empire (1721-1917), the Soviet Empire (1922-1991) and Russian Capitalism (1992-2022) were all the results of Russian aping of various Western ideologies of materialism. However, this 300-year period is now over. Russia has now reverted to being a National Russia.

Q: Did you ever meet Metr Antony of Sourozh? What would he think of the present situation in the Russian Church?

A: I not only often met him quite often, but he tonsured me reader over 42 years ago, in January 1981. As regards the present, all I can say is that he must be spinning in his grave at the sight of how Sergianist politicians who think like the State have taken over the Russian Church and principles thrown out of the window. The New Martyrs and the New Confessors have been betrayed by those who prefer money and luxury and the corruption that follows from those passions.

Q: Is the schismatic American ROCOR still in communion with any other Orthodox?

A: As far as I can see, this tiny US-based group of 300 churches and small communities is now openly preaching that you must be nasty in order to be nice! This is of course psychopathic, which is what we have come to expect of the new American ROCOR. It has lost so many normal Russian Orthodox that it now consorts occasionally only with certain politically very conservative, usually ex-Protestant, members of the Antiochian Jurisdiction (200 rather wealthy churches and communities in the USA). Both have stronger links to the USA than to Europe and West Asia and actual Orthodox Tradition. Both appear to be out of communion with the huge Russian, Romanian and Greek Churches. Birds of a feather flock together.

Q and A for March 2024

The Non-Orthodox World

Q: How did you use to receive converts when you served as a priest in ROCOR?

A: The same as now! I have always obeyed the ROCOR archbishop who ordained me to the priesthood, Archbishop Antony of Geneva. He himself simply followed the pre-Revolutionary tradition which he had learned from Metr Antony (Khrapovitsky) in his youth in Serbia, which is the universal tradition of the Russian Church. So I received Catholics by confession and communion and Protestants by chrismation. This is what is done today inside Russia, for example in Lithuania and Belarus, where there are many Catholics. Those who create schisms because of this are schismatics and there is no need to follow them. To obey schism is a sin because you are cutting yourself off from the Church, which is the source of grace, the bearer of the Holy Spirit.

Q: Why was the Catholic Easter so early this year, five weeks before the Orthodox Easter?

A: This is because the Vatican (and all Protestants follow the Vatican to the letter) no longer obeys the Tradition, as expressed in the canons, that Easter must follow the Jewish Passover. (If you remember in the year of the Crucifixion of Christ, the Jewish Passover fell on the Sabbath/Saturday between His Crucifixion and the Resurrection). In 2024 the Passover begins before sunset on Monday 22 April and ends at sunset on 30 April (it lasts eight days). Therefore, the correct Easter falls on 5 May. The Vatican’s early date is nonsense.

Q: Did the Jews kill Christ?

A: No. Firstly, the Romans killed Christ, though it is true that some Jews urged the Romans to do this. Secondly, Christ Himself was a Jew in His human nature, as was His mother, the Apostles and most of the thousands of first Christians. They did not kill Christ. Those Jews who had a part of responsibility in the death of Christ in His human nature were a small minority of the Jews and they died nearly 2,000 years ago, as also their children’s children 1900 years ago. To suggest that Jews who are alive today are responsible for killing Christ is racist nonsense and also very dangerous racist nonsense.

Q: When Non-Orthodox come and want to join the Church, how do you react as a priest?

A: There are two sorts of such people: Those who want to live a Christian life and the pathological cases. The first want to attend Church services and to love their own families and their neighbour more. The second have little interest in Church services and Christian life and just want to hate others, using the Church as an excuse for their pathology. These are ‘Orthodox’ Amish. I do not receive them into the Church and never have done.

Q: What are the signs of a psychopath?

A: According to the internet, which confirms our experience, the signs are:

Lack of empathy, arrogance, excessive vanity, lack of guilt, difficulty processing other people’s facial expressions, goal-oriented behaviour and insensitivity to punishment.

To this we would add jealousy because that is what lies behind their hatred. Hatred is why it is impossible for them to be Christians, whatever they may call themselves, bishops or whatever.

Russia

Q: Why have so many people stopped attending Russian churches in recent years? In Russia, the Ukraine and Latvia, between one-quarter and three-quarters of churchgoers have disappeared from most of the churches.

A: There were two stages in this disastrous process: Covid and then the Ukraine.

In the first stage, people saw fear of illness (not fear of God) and conformism to State propaganda on the part of clergy who closed (!) their churches. In the second stage, they saw clergy not preaching the Gospel, but justifying death and destruction. Instead of pastors (the pastors were and are being ‘defrocked’!), they found State war propagandists. As a result, they concluded that if the clergy behave like this, what is the point of going to church? It is understandable.

Q: Why are there Orthodox in Russia who praise Stalin? I have even heard that some want him to be canonised?

A: All of this is pure nationalism. It is rather like elderly British people who, brainwashed by the media, consider that Churchill was some kind of saint. Yet he gassed Kurds, he was responsible for several million dead in the Bengal famine and helped to murder 500,000 German civilians. Nationalist people like him because he was the wartime leader and Britain happened to be on the winning side. So it is with Stalin. It has nothing to do with Faith, just nationalism to do with being on the winning side.

Q: What are we to think of the ‘Russian world’ ‘doctrine that is now being promulgated by certain hierarchs of the Russian Church?

A: The liberals of ‘Public Orthodoxy’ condemn this. The conservatives approve of it. Why? Because the liberals are cosmopolitans and view everything Russian, including the Russian Orthodox Tradition, as narrow, provincial and racist. They want to modernise everything and be like Protestants. The conservatives are narrow moralisers, inclined towards phariseeism, who see the identity of the Church as ethnic, look at the past and care little for pastoral matters. Few on either side mention the Gospels, the Fathers, the Saints and the New Martyrs. This is because the interest of them all is not spiritual, but secular. All of them are simply hiding behind the Church, using it as camouflage to try and justify their secular views. The key criterion is how people view the New Martyrs of Russia. You will see that the liberals have no time for the martyrs, unless they expressed liberal views before being martyred and the conservatives have no time for them, unless they expressed conservative views before being martyred.

The sad thing about all this is that certain hierarchs have not only dug themselves a hole, but they are now continuing to dig. Stop digging!

Covid

Q: Looking back, what do you think covid was really about? And the lockdowns and the vaccines?

A: First of all, covid was a real virus. People did die from it. Of course, far fewer than they said. Most, though not all, who ‘died of covid’ were already very ill or very old and covid was simply the last straw. They just lost a few days, weeks or months from the end of their lives. In Romania hospitals were paid by the EU to put ‘coronavirus’ on death certificates and any relatives who complained were paid to accept it. Of course, the lockdowns were excessive and absurd. There was no need for them, just reasonable precautions would have been enough. So many businesses and shops closed down for ever and large numbers of people lost large amounts of money. All so unnecessary and tyrannical.

The most shameful thing was that State Churches, like the Church of England – as well as many others, including Orthodox – obeyed the lockdowns! Little wonder that so many people have stopped going to such churches. It was the last nail in the coffin for hundreds of Church of England churches. As for the vaccines, at best, they seemed to have no effect and if they did, it was admitted officially that the effect only lasted a few weeks! Such a waste of money. Many of us had to accept the vaccine, for example, all who worked for the health service and in care homes (like many of our parishioners). I advised everyone to make the sign of the cross if they had to be vaccinated and had no other choice. They had to keep their jobs. They suffered no ill effects then.

As for the origin, who knows? It may have been natural and happened through lack of hygiene. However, there are some very strange coincidences. The City of Wuhan, where it all began, has a huge laboratory investigating viruses. It accepts contracts from all over the world, including from the USA. And the main US aim is to destroy China. That would explain the incredibly stern measures and lockdowns taken by the Chinese government after the leak – if it was a lab leak. If so, the whole thing backfired and spread to the West. After all, like Hitler’s scientists, the Fascist South African government of that time tried to develop vaccines to kill black people, so it would not have been the first time they tried to kill or reduce a race. But perhaps we shall never know.

I say this, not because I am a conspiracy theorist, but because I am convinced of human stupidity. In other words, the causes of covid, either a lack of hygiene or an accidental leak, have the same cause: human stupidity.

In Memoriam: Metr Hilarion, the Last Metropolitan

The following has been compiled by Abbot Tikhon (Gayfundinov), the former private secretary of Metr Hilarion (Kapral). The latter was born in Spirit River Canada in 1948 and passed away in May 2022. We first met the future Metr Hilarion in 1986 and again and again in several countries. He came to celebrate and ordain in our church and was beloved by all. The last Metropolitan of the old ROCOR, now gone for ever, he fell ill and in the revolution of 2018 was removed from authority. Others took over from him and began following all the opposite policies, using his electronic signature, with the dire result of the new ROCOR that we see today. Born in Saint Petersburg, Fr Tikhon himself, like so very many others, was forced into leaving ROCOR. But God is not mocked!

The Battle for the Soul of the Russian Church

A Reply to Metr Tikhon of Pskov

Just a few years ago Metr Tikhon (Shevkunov) of Pskov asked what the specificity of the Church in the Russian emigration is and how it can contribute to the rebuilding of the much-ravaged Church inside Russia, where parish life was destroyed. Whether he asked through naivety or through intent, we do not know. He received no answer, for he did not contact the vital forces of the emigration. He only ever contacted those in the emigration who were of their own will falling over themselves to take on board all the evils of the Soviet and post-Soviet Church, its love of lucre and power.

The Trial of Pontius Pilate

The final days of the USSR in the 1980s were marked by a profound internal conflict between Communist Party bureaucrats and KGB (now called FSB) patriots. The first were Euro-Atlanticists, cowboys prepared to commit treason to Russia for a fistful of dollars. From them were born the oligarchs and mafia gangsters of the 1990s. The second were highly intelligent Slavophiles who wanted not the restoration of the bankrupt, anti-Russian and alien-inspired USSR, but the restoration of an independent Orthodox Russia.

Today the collapsing American Empire is suffering a similar profound internal conflict. This time it is between the US State Department and the CIA. The first are the social liberals, the internationalist, neocon LGBTQ propagandists, who are in love with Mammon. The second are the socially conservative, patriotic Americans, who are increasingly concerned by the Deep State of the American Establishment and its unpayable debts, accumulated over three generations by exceptionalist meddling abroad.

The first are those who stand behind Constantinople and the Zelensky regime in the Ukraine. The second are those who stand behind the ‘Gang of Three’, the bishops with their right-wing Evangelical contacts in the US, who use their base in Moscow and its very close contacts with the Patriarchate and even President Putin to undermine the Russian State (1). It is all of them who are now on trial like Pontius Pilate. They should tremble, for ‘God is not mocked’, which is what they have done. To all of those who quench the Spirit, I repeat: You cannot escape Divine Justice.

The Church of the Future

Today the identity of the Church is in the balance. Is it a politically-controlled, money-oriented institution, headed by elitist atheists and perverts, ‘princes of the Church’, who have no love for the people in their hearts. Or is it the uncorrupted Body of Christ? The Church of the future has long already been here. For us the uncorrupted Church:

  1. Is the Church of the Faithful, not of the money- and power-minded elite, the ‘effective managers’, who promote the Church as Business.
  2. Has no professional choirs, who as mercenaries only sing for money.
  3. Has priests who are pastors paid by the people, not a professional caste of business profiteers.
  4. Has parishes which are communities close to the monasteries, not railway station foyers, which are little more than religious supermarkets.
  5. Has bishops who are monastics, and not open or closet homosexual businessmen.
  6. Is politically independent of States and their secret services, whether CIA or FSB.

For such views churchpeople are accused of being criminals, excommunicated, suspended or defrocked! Yet here is the reply to Metr Tikhon, whether he wants it or not. On 11 March Archbishop Anastasios of Albania and his Synod have again shown these people the way, calling for a Pan-Orthodox Council to settle the neocon-initiated schism that has come about between Greeks and Russians. It is hardly the first such call, but this time Antichrist is now coming to Kiev. This is not the time for the theatricals of personal vanity on the part of patriarchs or of anyone else. The Beast is coming.

Note:

  1. We recall how the British MI5 did the same and used the British confessor of King George II (reigned 1935-1947) of Greece to extract information in the 1940s. In the 1970s we met that same very arrogant David Balfour, and after him the King’s British nanny, honest Charlotte. She confided to me. We conducted her funeral in Paris in the late 1980s. The ways of the world never change.

https://greekreporter.com/2022/06/15/father-dimitrios-the-orthodox-monk-who-was-a-british-spy/

 

 

Q and A August 2022

Q: Is the funeral of Metr Kallistos significant? What about the fact that it is taking place in a Catholic church?

A: I think it is significant. It is perhaps the last Pan-Orthodox event to take place in this country. We are turning a page. The old generation, for good and ill, is all but gone. The Orthodox world is now divided and chaotic and will remain so until there is a genuine and free Church Council, unmotivated by geopolitics and manipulations, whether Greek or Russian.

Some more rigid people will say that of course it is taking place in a Roman Catholic church because Metr Kallistos was an ecumenist. However, that for me is not the point. The point is that neither of the little Orthodox chapels in Oxford, neither the Russian, nor the Greek, is anywhere big enough to accommodate even a mere hundred people. Now that is really sad. When will the missionary work start in Oxford, a city of 1,000-2,000 cradle Orthodox and another 100,000 to become Orthodox? There are those in Oxford who think about books, but what we want is churches, basic infrastructure. Are the Orthodox incapable? Do they believe in anything at all, except in tiny ghettos?

Q: Why do Churches die out?

A: Churches die out when they no longer have any spiritual significance. This is clear from the many current examples and it concerns Protestant, Catholic and also Orthodox churches. To have no spiritual significance happens when you swim with the secular tide. Quickly your services become empty ritualism or nationalism (for example, Uniatism) and your teaching becomes moralism (for example, Puritanism). These together create Phariseeism, as with the Old Testament Jews, who were ritualistic, nationalistic (they hated the Samaritans and the Saducees) and moralistic – and who crucified Christ. This decadence of ritualism, nationalism and moralism always precedes the physical closure of church buildings. This is the spiritual law. There are no exceptions. If you become spiritually irrelevant, you will die and enter the dustbin of history, churches, bishops, priests, people.

Q: What is Uniatism?

A: It is Roman Catholicism which attempts, and by definition fails, to imitate the Orthodox Faith. Technically, it may reach a high level of imitation, but it has no spiritual or creative content, only intellectual or emotional content. It has no spontaneity or creative force.

Q: What is the greatest change you have seen in Orthodox practice over the last fifty years?

A: Undoubtedly, it is frequent communion. In the 1970s you were told on no account to take communion more than once a month, at best. A great many at that time still took communion, at most, once a year. Of course, it was this decadence of practice that had created the Russian Revolution and the spread of atheism everywhere. It was precisely the decadence of rare communion that was countered by both St John of Kronstadt and St John of Shanghai, who were in turn both opposed by the formalistic hypocrites, scribes and pharisees of the hierarchy.

Q: I have seen a video of a Russian priest blessing shells and kalashnikovs. Is this real?

A: I have seen the same video. I think it is a fake. However, I have also seen a video of a Ukrainian bishop blessing guns of the Kiev Army. I think that that one too is a fake. However, there is a slight chance it is all true. After all, everything is possible when you commit the idolatry of putting nationalism of any sort above Christ.

Q: Do you think the Russian African Exarchate will be successful?

A: I do not know. The Russian Church now has three Exarchates – in Western Europe, South-East Asia and the new one in Africa. The sign of success will be native European, Asian and African bishops, priests and autonomy. We appear to be very far from that at present. If ‘nativisation’, that is incarnation, does not happen, all these Exarchates will die out as some sort of exotica imposed or allowed for temporary ideological reasons. This was the case in this country, where the Patriarchal presence is now dying out.

At present a lot of African priests have joined the Russian Exarchate there simply because their bishops were absentee landlords. They lived in their villas in Athens and visited their wretched poor flocks once a year, arriving in limousines, like the Greek bishop in the Congo. On the other hand, where there was a good Greek bishop, nobody has left. It is always the same. In Western Europe where the bishop only persecutes his clergy, dreams about pumping money out of poor parishes, buying £400 shoes and bling, people will leave him for a genuine Orthodox bishop.

It is not a question of jurisdiction or nationality, it is simply a matter of whether the bishop behaves as a Christian or as a monster! Of course the Africans left for the Russians in the above cases. If the Russians opened in Israel, the same would happen there and the people would leave the Greek Patriarchate of Jerusalem for a new Exarchate. On the other hand, there are plenty of Russians who would leave their corrupt Russian bishop if they were sent a genuinely Orthodox Greek bishop.

Q: Do you think the Moscow Patriarchate and ROCOR will ever recover from the PR disaster of their attitude to the military operation in the Ukraine?

A: Who knows? For the moment it seems highly unlikely. Certainly, the multinational and missionary aspect of the Russian Church has gone out of the window. Many Non-Russians and Russians too have left both the Patriarchal and the ROCOR jurisdictions, at least, in Western Europe. Half the ROCOR Diocese in England ended up under the Romanian Church and has attracted many Ukrainians and Russians, precisely those who reject politics and nationalism and just want to be Orthodox. English people don’t want to attend Russian churches, MP or ROCOR. If I were a Ukrainian, would I want to attend them?

Thank God we, who were granted canonical letters of leave from the Moscow Patriarchate exactly eight days before the events on 24 February 2022 and found a safe refuge in the Romanian Church, are outside all that. It has always been the duty of us pastors (even more it should be of archpastors) to lead the way out of politics and scandals like the Miami one in ROCOR, steering the ship of the church away from all that worldliness to protect the people. Those who do not protect the people will be – and already are – condemned by history.

Q: Do bishops of all Local Churches try and steal property?

A: Absolutely. There were many cases in the USA in the old Russian Metropolia (now the OCA).  Then remember the Greek bishop in Italy who demanded the keys to the Russian churches in Florence and San Remo in 2019 – immediately they left him and he lost everything. The same thing happened in France when the Greek bishop tried to take over the Rue Daru Cathedral. There have also been several cases in Moldova over the last twenty years, which led priests and parishes to join the Romanian Church. There have been Russian cases in the USA elsewhere over the years, where the Russians then lost many valuable properties through their crass mishandling of the situation, as in Amsterdam this year, as with the Brookwood case in England in 2007.

In England alone they lost at least £7.5 million of assets between 2007 and 2022, about 75% of their total assets, to other jurisdictions. If they had only behaved as Christians and not as property-grabbers, all would have been well. Such mismanagement and incompetence are punished by immediate sackings in the corporate world, but not, it seems, in the Church. It is always the same old story, priests are free to do whatever they want if they have no property, but if they have property, then there is greed and they are attacked and slandered on the internet. And this happens throughout the Orthodox world. Fortunately, the guilty are a minority of bishops.

Q: Where can I find the liturgical texts to locally-venerated Western Saints?

A: The complete set of liturgical services for the Western Saints have been in the public domain on the Romanian Orthodox website ‘Orthodoxengland’ website for some 15 years.

 

The Crisis in the Orthodox Episcopate

There are just over 1,000 Orthodox bishops in the world, although well over 100 of them are retired through ill health or extreme old age .Despite this figure, which is much greater than a generation ago, though far less than in the early centuries, there is a great shortage of bishops in certain, though not all, Local Churches. A figure more than double, of about 2,200 bishops, to care for the world’s 220 million Orthodox Christians, would be far more appropriate. For example, the Russian Orthodox Church has only 400 bishops, a figure that needs to be quadrupled for the 164 million Russian Orthodox, 75% of the total. This would give one bishop for every 25 parishes, which is not unreasonable, given that the number of parishes is still rapidly increasing.

The problem in this matter is that bishops must be single, that is, celibate, specifically in most cases, they must be monks. As this severely limits the pool of available episcopal candidates, what can be done?

Some of a Protestant and modernist ilk immediately suggest that married men should be allowed to become bishops. This is absurd. It is also uncanonical. The canon forbidding married bishops (Canon XII of the Sixth Council in Trullo) is there for at least two reasons:

Firstly, there is the ever-present danger of corruption and careerism. We can think of the case of the schismatic Filaret, who appointed himself ‘Patriarch of Kiev’, who was married and allowed his wife to vet all candidates for the priesthood, according to what bribe they gave her. And inevitably, a married bishop will be tempted to find jobs for his children.

Secondly, poor wives! It is bad enough being married to a priest. When would a bishop’s wife ever see him? He would be far too busy.

However, the situation is even worse. Since a potential bishop has to be single, you will inevitably attract perverts. A single man does not make a bishop. He can, however, be a homosexual, either physically or else psychologically (psychological homosexuals are generally narcissists who persecute married clergy because the married have everything that they do not have, or, far worse, they may be pedophiles – as the Roman Catholic world knows to its cost. Thus the pool is even more limited. It has to be a single man who is sexually, and so psychologically, normal, not a dry and formalistic monk who has everything, but because he has no love, only a sadistic jealousy, he has nothing (1 Cor 13).

What is to be done, given such a very limited pool of candidates? While we are waiting for a monastic revival and so more candidates, bishops will simply have to delegate far more than they do at present, to married priests and laypeople. Ultimately, after all, there is only one thing that they cannot delegate – and that is ordination.

 

At Last a Real Cathedral for all Orthodox in London?

One of the greatest pastoral problems in London is the chronic lack of Orthodox churches. For example, St Sophia’s Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Moscow Road is very small, hardly a Cathedral at all, and the medium-sized Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Knightsbridge is smaller than St John’s Russian Orthodox church in provincial Colchester. Of course, there is one church building that would suit Orthodox in London, providing it was frescoed and fitted with iconostases and other Church furnishings. One person who works there would be glad to help us use it.

St Paul’s Cathedral is located on Ludgate Hill, the highest point in the City of London. Its dedication to the holy apostle Paul dates back to the original church on the site, founded in 604, though unproven stories assert that this was because St Paul actually preached here. The present Cathedral, dating from the late 17th century, was designed by Sir Christopher Wren. At 365 feet (111 m) high, it was until 1967 the tallest building in London.

The first recorded Orthodox Bishop of London was called either Restitutus or Adelphius and attended the Council of Arles in 314. However, the location of his Cathedral is unknown. St Bede recorded that in 604 St Augustine consecrated Mellitus as the first Bishop of the East Saxons, whose territory covered London, and their King, Sabert. Sabert’s uncle and overlord, Ethelbert, King of Kent, built a church dedicated to St Paul in London, as the seat of the new bishop. It is assumed that this first Cathedral stood on the same site as the present one.

On the death of Sabert in about 616, his pagan sons expelled Bishop Mellitus from London and the East Saxons reverted to paganism. Christianity was restored later in the seventh century and it is presumed that either the Cathedral was restored or else a new one was built as the seat of seventh-century bishops like St Cedd and St Erconwald, ‘The Light of London’, who was buried in the Cathedral in 693. This building, or a successor, was destroyed by fire in 962 but rebuilt in the same year.

In 1016 King Ethelred the Unready was buried in the Cathedral. This was burned down with much of the city in a fire in 1087. The Norman occupiers then built a new Cathedral, known to history as ‘Old St Paul’s’. This Gothic building was in turn gutted by the Great Fire of London of 1666. While it might have been possible to rebuild it, a decision was taken to build a new Cathedral. The task of designing it was assigned to Sir Christopher Wren in 1669.

The design process took several years, but the result was the present St Paul’s Cathedral, modelled partly on St Peter’s in the Vatican. St Paul’s is still the second largest church in Britain. The building was financed by a tax on coal and was completed within the architect’s lifetime. It was declared officially complete by Parliament on 25 December 1711, though in fact construction continued for several years after that. In 1716 the total costs amounted to £1,095,556 (£148 million in 2015 money).

Today, though with a small but active Protestant congregation, St Paul’s is largely a tourist monument. With an area of some 6,000 square metres and several altars, it is ideally suited for London’s huge numbers of Orthodox Christians. Consecrated to the holy apostles Peter and Paul, it could become the Cathedral for all Orthodox in London. Fantasy? But our God works miracles.