Tag: Russian

Romania vs Moscow, 1940

Today, relations between the patriarchates of Moscow and Romania are tense: both lay claim to jurisdiction in the Republic of Moldova, which makes up about two-thirds of the historic region known as Bessarabia. The other third of Bessarabia is now in Ukraine, Budjak (Izmail and Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi). In the Republic of...

St John Maximovitch on the Purpose of the Russian Diaspora

Last week, the World Russian People's Council, chaired by Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, issued a document called "The Present and Future of the Russian World." The document contains several problematic ideas. It describes the "Russian World" in this way: "The borders of the Russian world as a spiritual, cultural and...

How Did Orthodoxy Get Into This Mess?

It almost goes without saying that the Orthodox world is a mess right now. The situation in Ukraine alone is a disaster: a Russian invasion of the country backed by Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, persecution of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) by the state, and a recognized-by-only-some Orthodox Church of...

The Unholy Side of Holy Russia

Some people think of nineteenth century Russia as an idealized Orthodox society – Holy Russia, a civilization on par with the golden age of the Byzantine Empire as a bastion of Orthodoxy. The reality of both societies is much more complicated. The nineteenth century as “Holy Russia” is not a...

The Georgian Patriarch’s Rebuke of St Tikhon

For centuries, the Orthodox Church in Georgia was autocephalous, with its own Patriarch (also known as "Catholicos"). In fact, for a long time there were actually two autocephalous Georgian Churches, one in the east and one in the west, each led by its own Catholicos-Patriarch. In 1783, the King of...

Who was “Agapius Honcharenko”?

Note: Last week, we met Fr. Agapius Honcharenko, who served the first known Orthodox liturgies in New York (or, for that matter, the United States of America -- remember, this is when Alaska was still part of the Russian Empire). (Click here to read that article.) Today, we continue the...

The Early History of Orthodoxy in Chicago

In 2011, I gave a talk at Holy Apostles Greek Orthodox Church in Westchester, Illinois, on the early history of Orthodoxy in Chicago. Here's the text of that lecture, basically unedited since I wrote it 7+ years ago. ******* The story of Orthodoxy in Chicago really begins in the 1880s....

Conference on St. Tikhon at Jordanville

On October 9-10, Holy Trinity Seminary in Jordanville, NY is hosting a conference on the life and times of St. Tikhon, the great Russian bishop in America and later Patriarch of Moscow. I'm one of the speakers (on St. Tikhon's interactions with the other Orthodox ethnic groups in America), but...

Who was St. Tikhon?

Full name: Tikhon Bellavin Dates: 1865 to 1925 In America: 1898 to 1907 Who was he? Head of the Russian Archdiocese in North America at the turn of the 20th century, and later Patriarch of Moscow during the Bolshevik Revolution and its bloody aftermath. He was known for being a...

A History of the Antiochian Representation Church in Moscow

Since 1848, the Patriarchate of Antioch has had a "metochion," or representation church (basically an church embassy) in Moscow. Immediately before he came to America, St. Raphael Hawaweeny served as head of the metochion. Earlier this year, the must-read blog Notes on Arab Orthodoxy published a brief history of the...