Valery Panyushkin | May 22, 2026
In the book Church Hitchhiking,
by priest Alexei Uminsky and journalist Ksenia Luchenko, published in April
2026 by Vidim Books, the dismissal of a priest, suspension from serving, and
deposition from the priesthood are presented as acts of complete arbitrariness.
There is no preliminary investigation, no time to review the charges—a priest
simply receives a notice signed by the chairman of the ecclesiastical court,
containing no explanation of the grounds for the decision, but merely a ruling declaring
that he has been deposed from the priesthood. In other words, he is no longer a
priest and can no longer celebrate the Divine Liturgy, hear confessions,
administer Holy Communion, baptize, perform marriages, and so forth. In short,
he is no longer what he has been his entire life.
The investigative project Sistema
examined how ecclesiastical courts operate in Russia, how investigations are
conducted, who the judges are, who drafted the laws and who interprets them,
and, finally, whether priests can avoid arbitrary judicial decisions.
* * *
The public initiative “Christians
Against War” has already documented at least 47 priests and deacons of the
Russian Orthodox Church who have been subjected to various forms of repression,
ranging from suspension from serving to deposition from the priesthood, because
of their anti-war views and refusal to read the “Prayer for Holy Rus’.” This
prayer was prescribed by Patriarch Kirill. In it, the priest declares to the
Lord that “behold, those who desire war have risen up against Holy Rus’,” and
asks the Lord to “grant victory by Thy power.”
Priests from Vladivostok to
Vilnius are being deposed from the priesthood. Fr. Alexei Uminsky (who was also
deposed
for refusing to read this prayer) told Sistema that every week he regularly
receives distressed letters from former colleagues throughout the country.
Orthodox priests consider it impossible in good conscience to pray for the war
against Ukraine, but fear denunciations and proceedings before an
ecclesiastical court.
Justice by Telephone
Uminsky told Sistema that
his suspension from serving shortly before Christmas in 2024 and his subsequent
deposition from the priesthood did not follow any previously established
procedure, but were carried out through telephone calls and almost informal
meetings. He received a call from Protopresbyter Vladimir Divakov, Dean of
Moscow’s Central District and Secretary of the Moscow Diocesan Council of the
Russian Orthodox Church, who told him that he expected Fr. Alexei at his Church
of the Great Ascension on Nikitskaya Street the following day to deliver a
decree to him. He did not say what kind of decree it was.
Divakov is one of Moscow’s
longest-serving priests and rector of the famous “church where Pushkin was
married.” According to three sources close to the Patriarchate who spoke with Sistema,
he is known among the clergy by the nickname “Koschei the Deathless,” since he
has served as rector of the Church of the Great Ascension since 1990.
In explaining the term “dean” (blagochinny),
two sources close to the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church who spoke
with Sistema (on condition of anonymity, because their careers are tied
to the Moscow Patriarchate) used the term smotryashchy (“overseer”) from
criminal slang—an overseer responsible for the Orthodox parishes of Moscow’s
Central District.
In overseeing all the parishes of
Moscow’s Central District, Divakov, it must be said, apparently has not amassed
any great wealth from these “righteous labors.” His standard of living is that
of a successful manager, but not a wealthy man. Sistema discovered that
he owns a small apartment in Moscow and a 2008 Toyota Camry.
On the other hand, he possesses a
long list of symbolic attributes of high standing in the Russian Orthodox
Church: regularly concelebrating with the Patriarch on feast days at the Cathedral
of Christ the Savior, the rank of Protopresbyter, and an impressive list of
ecclesiastical awards:
a Patriarchal Commemorative Cross with Decorations, the Order of Venerable
Seraphim of Sarov, the Order of St. Sergius of Radonezh, the Order of Prince
Vladimir…
Sergei Chapnin, Director of
Communications at the Orthodox Christian Studies Center at Fordham University
(USA), told Sistema that ecclesiastical awards are customarily treated
with the utmost seriousness in Orthodox circles. They are reverently worn on
solemn occasions, and close attention is paid to who receives which decorations
and whether they are awarded at the appropriate time. According to Chapnin, FSB
officers even believe that ecclesiastical awards guarantee members of the
security services who are killed in the line of duty a funeral service at the
Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Just how such a funeral service affects one's
fate in the afterlife is unknown, but the opportunity is considered something
to be highly valued.
Uminsky told Sistema that
at noon on January 5, 2024, Divakov handed him a decree suspending him from
serving at the Church of the Great Ascension. He also told him that Fr. Alexei
was required to appear immediately before a disciplinary commission at the
Church of the Archangel Michael on Pirogovskaya Street. Divakov added, on his
own behalf, that he deeply sympathized with Fr. Alexei. Divakov did not respond
to Sistema's request for comment.
Less than an hour later, the
disciplinary commission asked Uminsky several questions, including why he did
not read the “Prayer for the Victory of Holy Rus’.” Upon receiving the answer,
“I do not know what Holy Rus’ is,” the commission informed the priest that he
was suspended from serving and demanded that he immediately remove his pectoral
cross.
Uminsky did not personally know
any of the four members of the disciplinary commission, and, as the priest told
Sistema, they did not introduce themselves. Judging by the membership
of the disciplinary commission listed on the Patriarchate’s website, the
following individuals should have been present to question Fr. Alexei at the
Church of the Archangel Michael:
- Archpriest Nikolai Inozemtsev (chairman of the
commission, rector of Kazan Cathedral on Red Square, a small church near
the Historical Museum),
- Archpriest Alexander Farkovets (deputy chairman),
- Priest Alexei Dyachenko,
- Archpriest Anatoly Alefirov,
- Archpriest Andrei Shumilov.
Fr. Alexei Uminsky does not know
which of the five was absent from the hearing.
Sistema found no evidence
of substantial wealth belonging to Nikolai Inozemtsev, chairman of the
disciplinary commission. His property consists only of a 90-square-meter
apartment in a new building on Partizanskaya Street in Moscow, a parking space,
a Lada, a Hyundai Terracan, and a Kia Sorento provided for official use. Apart
from his salary as rector, he may receive some additional income from the
Nikolo-Ugreshsky Theological Seminary—but his standard of living is comparable
to that of a university professor, nothing more.
Sergei Chapnin believes that
Inozemtsev removes the priestly crosses from his fellow clergy out of
obedience, guided by an unerring sense of subordination and discipline—the very
qualities needed to secure one's place in the contemporary hierarchy of the
Russian Orthodox Church. Inozemtsev did not respond to Sistema's request
for comment.
Shortly after his suspension from
serving, Fr. Alexei Uminsky received a telephone call from the acting dean of
the Theophany District, to which the Church of the Holy Trinity in Khokhly,
where Uminsky had served, belongs. The acting dean was a priest named Maxim.
Uminsky told Sistema that he did not know Fr. Maxim personally and did
not even know his surname. Apparently, this was Archpriest Maxim Baturin, who
was indeed serving
as acting dean at the time. He informed Uminsky that a new rector had
already been appointed to his church and would soon arrive to take over its
administration. The new rector was Fr. Andrei Tkachev, known in Orthodox
circles for his staunch support of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by
Russian troops.
Immediately after Christmas, Alexei
Uminsky was repeatedly summoned by telephone and email to appear before an
ecclesiastical court, which was to consider the question of deposing Fr. Alexei
from the priesthood. Unlike the disciplinary commission, which can only suspend
a priest from serving, and only temporarily, the court has the power to deprive
him of his very profession as a priest (to use secular
terminology)—permanently.
Uminsky told Sistema that
a priest of his acquaintance warned him that arrangements were being made for
his arrest immediately after the ecclesiastical court proceedings—this time by
the secular authorities of Russia. Alexei Uminsky did not appear before the
court and left Russia. Subsequently, he received the following notification by
email: “His Holiness, the Most Holy Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Rus’,
has confirmed the decision of the Moscow Diocesan Court of January 13, 2024, to
depose you from the priesthood on the basis of the 25th Apostolic Canon, for
violating your priestly oath (perjury)—namely, refusing to carry out the
Patriarchal blessing to read the Prayer for Holy Rus’ during the Divine
Liturgy.”
The notification was signed by
Archpriest Mikhail Ryazantsev, chairman of the Moscow Diocesan Court. In
addition to the chairman, the following members of
the court were supposed to participate in the hearing: Archpriest Vladislav
Tsypin (deputy chairman), Archpriest Alexei Kruglik (secretary), and
Archpriests Alexander Dasaev and Vladimir Chuvikin.
Canon Law
In theory, Sergei Chapnin
explained to Sistema, the disciplinary commission should have performed the
function of a preliminary investigation for the ecclesiastical court—speaking
with parishioners, questioning Uminsky himself, and establishing whether a
violation of his oath (“perjury”) had occurred. Apparently, none of this was
done. At any rate, three parishioners of the Church of the Holy Trinity in
Khokhly who spoke with Sistema had heard nothing about any investigators
visiting their church.
In fact, Uminsky effectively
informed on himself. During a public broadcast
on the YouTube channel Zhivoy Gvozd (“Live Nail”), he advised
Christians to seek out priests “who pray more for peace than for victory.” He
did not explicitly admit during the broadcast, “I do not read the Prayer for
Holy Rus’.” Uminsky told Sistema that he made this admission himself at
the meeting of the disciplinary commission. It was probably this admission that
served as the basis for his suspension from serving and subsequent deposition
from the priesthood.
Deacon Andrei Kuraev, who was
deposed from the diaconate in 2020 for “blasphemy against the Church” and
“publishing information of a defamatory nature,” that is, for criticizing
ecclesiastical hierarchs, wrote an eight-hundred-page book
entitled Paradoxes of Canon Law. Fr. Andrei summarized its main conclusions
for Sistema as follows: “Ecclesiastical courts are something of a
novelty in the life of the Russian Orthodox Church. In the nineteenth century,
ecclesiastical courts functioned normally, but the Soviet authorities destroyed
that tradition. Formally, the courts were reestablished in 2004, but they only
began operating in practice under Gundyaev [Patriarch Kirill]. Gundyaev hastily
cobbled together the rules governing ecclesiastical courts because it is not
always convenient for him to deal with troublesome priests personally. That is
what an ecclesiastical court is needed for.”
Kuraev told Sistema that
today there is not the slightest semblance of a separation of powers within the
Orthodox Church: judicial authority is not independent of executive authority.
The members of a diocesan court are appointed by decree of the ruling bishop.
Ecclesiastical judges receive no salary for their judicial duties and continue
serving in ordinary parishes—in other words, they are entirely dependent on the
bishop, who is their employer. The court takes up cases only upon the written
instruction of the bishop and has no authority to initiate proceedings on its
own. The court’s judgment is submitted to the bishop and does not take effect
without his approval.
“The court’s procedures,” Kuraev
continues, “make no provision for defense counsel. When you ask, ‘May I come
with a lawyer?’ they answer, ‘No, this is a closed hearing.’ This contradicts
tradition. In the Byzantine Empire, such legal defenders were provided, and an
entire staff of them was maintained at the Patriarchate’s expense.”
It also follows from Kuraev’s
explanations that making recordings of any kind is prohibited in ecclesiastical
court proceedings. According to Kuraev, the only ecclesiastical court hearing
conducted via Zoom, which theoretically could have been recorded, was the trial
of Fr. Dmitry Ostanin, rector of the Church of the Theophany in Bergen, Norway.
This priest was also suspended
from serving for supporting Ukraine. Ostanin appeared before the court
remotely, but Kuraev does not know whether a recording of the hearing has
survived.
“There is no procedural code
whatsoever,” Kuraev continues. “Nowhere are the requirements governing court
proceedings set out. If, for example, witnesses may be summoned in a case, no
one knows how they are to be summoned, who will pay their travel expenses, and
so forth. The prosecutor and the judge are one and the same person. The same
person who brings the charges also delivers the verdict. The accused is not
permitted to examine the court records. A person summoned before the court is
not informed of the charges against him. You are expected to appear, and then
they spring the charges on you. No attempts are made to achieve reconciliation
before the trial.”
“In my case, the Patriarch
allowed me to appeal, but to the very same court that had pronounced judgment
against me,” he continues. “The court does not record its response to the
arguments presented by the accused in any way. I, for example, was accused [by
that same Moscow Diocesan Court], among other things, of allegedly slandering
the Bishop of Gomel by accusing him of sexually harassing a seminarian. At the
hearing, I asked that the testimony of this seminarian, who was prepared to
appear in court and testify, be admitted into evidence. But I received the
answer, ‘No, there is no need.’ I placed the documents on the judges’ table,
but the judges would not even touch them, as though they were a bomb.”
It has not been possible to
verify Kuraev’s account. Sistema sent questions concerning these
allegations to all members of the Diocesan Court but received no replies.
Kuraev told Sistema that
the judgment, at least in his case, had been written in advance, even before
the hearing began.
“The hearing lasted two hours,”
Kuraev says. “Then I was asked to leave so that the judges could reach a
decision, but just ten minutes later they called me back to sign an
acknowledgment that I had been informed of the judgment. That would not have
been enough time even to type up the text.”
Apostolic Canons
Sergei Chapnin explained to Sistema
that ecclesiastical rules cannot simply be equated with secular laws. It is
incorrect to regard suspension from serving as dismissal from employment, or
deposition from the priesthood as lustration. According to him, ecclesiastical
rules take precedence, as it were, over the laws of the state. A priest, for
example, works and receives a salary at his church under an employment
contract, but if he is suspended from serving or deposed from the priesthood,
the customary practice is simply to submit a letter of resignation rather than
demand compliance with the Labor Code. According to Chapnin, a civilized state
should not so much impose its own laws on believers as ensure that the Church
observes the canonical rules it has adopted.
And here many questions arise.
The canonical basis on which judgment was pronounced against Uminsky and many
other contemporary Orthodox priests—“Apostolic
Canon 25, violation of an oath”—requires interpretation in the light of
contemporary circumstances from the standpoint of ecclesiastical law.
Does refusing to read a prayer
prescribed with the Patriarch’s blessing constitute a violation of an oath? Is
a blessing an order? Finally, is the Church interpreting the meaning of the
25th Apostolic Canon correctly: “If a bishop, presbyter, or deacon is convicted
of fornication, perjury, or theft, let him be deposed, but not excommunicated.
For Scripture says: Do not punish twice for the same offense”? Is not the
purpose of this Canon to prevent someone from being punished twice for the same
offense? Is the Church then justified in first suspending priests from serving
for refusing to read the “Prayer for Victory” and subsequently deposing them
from the priesthood for that same refusal—in other words, punishing them twice?
How, in general, should ecclesiastical canons adopted by the Seven
Ecumenical Councils more than a thousand years ago be applied in the modern
world? How, for example, should the 45th
Apostolic Canon be applied, which forbids priests to pray with those of
other faiths and prescribes excommunication from the Church for such joint
prayer? Should Archbishop Zosima (Ostapenko) of Elista be deposed from the
priesthood for having prayed
together with the Dalai Lama in 2004? Should Patriarch Kirill be excommunicated
from the Church for having offered
a prayer to the Mother of God together with Pope Francis in Havana in 2016?
Sistema received no answers to these questions from the Moscow
Patriarchate, while Sergei Chapnin told Sistema that ecclesiastical
jurists themselves have no consensus on these matters.
Andrei Kuraev told Sistema that
Archpriest
Vladislav Tsypin, deputy chairman of the Moscow Diocesan Court and
professor of canon law at the Moscow Theological Academy, answered all his
students’ questions about how ancient canons should be applied to contemporary
Church life with the words: “As the Bishop blesses.”
The Sacristan-Chairman
Judging by his tone, Kuraev even
seems to harbor some resentment toward Archpriest Vladislav Tsypin. They are
old acquaintances—professor and student, longtime teaching colleagues at the
Academy, and neighbors in the same building. They had visited each other’s
homes many times. But as soon as ecclesiastical proceedings against Kuraev began,
there was not a single telephone call, not even one “attempt to have a quiet
word,” as Kuraev puts it, on Tsypin’s part. When it came to the court
proceedings, Tsypin unequivocally placed ecclesiastical obedience above
personal relationships.
Kuraev also has a low opinion of
Fr. Mikhail Ryazantsev, chairman of the Court. The deacon told Sistema
that Ryazantsev became sacristan of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior and
chairman of the Moscow Diocesan Court precisely because he has absolutely no
influence, independence, or authority of his own within the Russian Orthodox
Church. It is Tsypin who plays the leading role in the court, while Ryazantsev
is its chairman in name only. This is because, as a matter of course—not
according to any written rule, but by tradition—the sacristan, that is, the de
facto rector of the cathedral (the official rector being the Patriarch
himself), also serves as chairman of the court.
Journalists have repeatedly written
about the business enterprises developed by the Cathedral of Christ the Savior
Foundation around the cathedral, which officially belongs to the city of
Moscow. These include shopping pavilions, an underground parking garage, a car
wash called “Mytny Dvor,” and an automobile repair shop whose customers were
invited, while waiting for their cars, to venerate the relics of St. Nicholas
when they were brought from Bari to Moscow and people were standing in line for
hours on Volkhonka Street to venerate them… There is also income from renting
out premises and subsidies from the Moscow city government amounting to
hundreds of millions of rubles.
“It is normal for the cathedral
to belong to the city rather than the Church,” Kuraev told Sistema.
“That was also the case in Tsarist Russia. The Church would go bankrupt if the
large cathedrals were transferred to its balance sheet.”
The Cathedral of Christ the
Savior Foundation is headed,
on the Moscow city government’s side, by Igor Kovalev, an administrator who
keeps a low public profile, and on the Church’s side, by Fr. Mikhail
Ryazantsev. Sistema was unable to find evidence that Ryazantsev derives
any extraordinary income from this multibillion-ruble business. A small
apartment in Krylatskoye and a Fiat 500 indicate a comfortable standard of
living, but not wealth.
On the other hand, the priest has
an impressive list of ecclesiastical and state awards.
He also enjoys a particular kind of influence: direct access to the powerful,
afforded by his position as the de facto rector of the country’s
principal cathedral.
“It is not so easy to gain access
to some important Moscow or federal official,” Sergei Chapnin explained to Sistema.
“But after a feast-day service or a funeral, one can approach such an official
and settle virtually any matter informally.”
Chapnin and Kuraev, speaking with
Sistema independently of one another and at different times, asserted
that the chairman of a diocesan court generally places great value on his
position and therefore delivers judicial decisions in complete accordance with
the wishes of the ecclesiastical authorities. This applies not only to Moscow
but to every other diocese as well. In Lithuania, for example, Metropolitan
Innokenty of Vilnius deposed
four prominent Orthodox priests on a single day (June 29, 2022). All of them
had spoken out against the war, and the Metropolitan did not dare to permit
such dissent, from Moscow’s perspective, within his diocese.
Ryazantsev did not respond to Sistema’s
request for comment.
A Cowardly Man
Deacon Andrei Kuraev told Sistema
that in its dioceses abroad, the Russian Orthodox Church generally tries to
adopt a lenient approach, overlook anti-war statements by clergy, refrain from
insisting too strongly on the reading of the “Prayer for Victory,” and reach
compromises with local authorities so as not to lose parishioners.
This happened, for example, in
Latvia. In 2022, the Latvian Parliament (Saeima) declared the Latvian Orthodox
Church independent of the Russian Church, and the Council of the Latvian Church
amended its statute. Moscow, however, took no canonical action in response: it
neither anathematized the Latvian “schismatics” nor recognized Latvian
autocephaly. It merely expressed an understanding of the difficult political
situation and called upon
the faithful to “preserve unity.” Legally, the Latvian Church remains part of
the Russian Church, although the Latvian government does not recognize this.
“They quietly let the matter
slide,” Chapnin told Sistema. “They left it unresolved until better
times.”
Things were different in
Lithuania. Priest Vladimir Selyavko, who was deposed from the priesthood in
2022, told Sistema that under Metropolitan Chrysostomos (Martishkin),
until his death in 2010, the Lithuanian Orthodox Church had operated virtually
independently of Moscow. Metropolitan Innokenty (Vasilyev), who succeeded
Chrysostomos and continues to head the diocese, also has a reputation as a
liberal-minded man, but times are changing.
“He is a gentle man, not
bloodthirsty,” Fr. Vladimir Selyavko, who served as the Metropolitan’s
secretary for more than seven years, says of Innokenty. “But he is cowardly. He
is afraid of everything. He is afraid to go to the doctor. He is afraid to
travel on narrow roads and always asks to be driven along a major highway. But
most of all, he is afraid of his superiors.”
Sistema was unable to obtain
confirmation or a denial of these statements from the press office of the
Russian Orthodox Church’s Diocese of Vilnius.
After the beginning of the
full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops, many Lithuanian priests spoke
out against the war. The Metropolitan’s Chancellor (as the vicar, or diocesan
secretary, is called in Lithuania), Dean of Vilnius, and rector of the
Prechistensky Cathedral, Vitaly Mockus, openly spoke
out against the war in Lithuanian and to the Lithuanian media. According to
Fr. Vladimir Selyavko, Mockus’s statement, “The Orthodox of Lithuania Condemn
Russia’s Actions in Invading Ukraine,” was even published on the website of the
Diocese of Vilnius, although that page has since been deleted. Priests who
concelebrated with Fr. Vitaly at the cathedral, including Vladimir Selyavko,
likewise made no secret of their anti-war position in conversations with journalists.
Vladimir Selyavko told Sistema
that Metropolitan Innokenty attempted to find a compromise and, on March 17,
2022, even convened a council intended to reconcile the anti-war position of
the Lithuanian priests with the pro-war position of the Moscow Patriarchate.
Following the council, he issued his famous statement:
“The position of the Orthodox Church in Lithuania remains unchanged—we
resolutely condemn Russia’s war against Ukraine and pray to God for its swift
conclusion… Patriarch Kirill and I have different political views and different
perceptions of current events. His political statements concerning the war in
Ukraine represent his personal opinion. We in Lithuania do not agree with him.”
But on April 14, 2022, Innokenty
removed Vitaly Mockus from his positions as Chancellor, Dean, and rector of the
Prechistensky Cathedral, and appointed Bishop
Ambrosy (Fedukovich) of Trakai to all these positions, as well as to the
chairmanship of the ecclesiastical court. Shortly thereafter, the former
Chancellor, Mockus, was deposed from the priesthood, along with the priests who
had concelebrated with him at the Prechistensky Cathedral.
Concerning Ambrosy, Fr. Vladimir
Selyavko relates that at the beginning of the full-scale war, the Bishop
invited him for a conversation. At the time, Fr. Vladimir noticed on the
Bishop’s desk printouts of anti-war statements made by Chancellor Mockus and
Selyavko himself, left in plain sight either accidentally or deliberately. Fr.
Vladimir believes that it was Bishop Ambrosy who sent Moscow the materials
documenting the anti-war sentiments of the Lithuanian priests, meaning that the
person who denounced them was also their judge.
A telephone call from the Moscow
Patriarchate then followed to Metropolitan Innokenty, who had only recently
condemned the war. Innokenty became frightened and dismissed Mockus, and soon
afterward suspended him and his like-minded fellow concelebrants, Vitaly
Dauparas, Georgy Ananyev, Gintaras Sungaila, and Vladimir Selyavko, from
serving and deposed them from the priesthood.
Sistema was unable to
independently verify Fr. Vladimir Selyavko’s account. Representatives of the
Russian Orthodox Church’s Diocese of Vilnius did not respond to Sistema’s questions.
Appeal to Istanbul
The main body of ecclesiastical
law dates from the era of the Ecumenical Councils, that is, from the fourth to
the ninth century.
Sergei Chapnin, Director of
Communications at the Orthodox Christian Studies Center at Fordham University,
explained to Sistema: “Before the Revolution of 1917, Russia had
ecclesiastical courts and highly accomplished specialists in canon law. In
Western countries, canon law continued to exist and develop throughout this
period. One can study law at a Catholic university, for example, and specialize
specifically in canon law. Nothing comparable existed in Soviet Russia, nor
does it exist in post-Soviet Russia. This means that there is a problem with
the interpretation of legal and ecclesiastical canonical norms. This is a major
problem because the main body of ecclesiastical law dates from the era of the
Ecumenical Councils, that is, from the fourth to the ninth century. Everything
was different then, and therefore the task requiring creative judgment on the
part of contemporary canon lawyers is to apply canonical norms to modern life.”
According to Chapnin, unlike
Greece, for example, where the tradition of ecclesiastical law has remained
uninterrupted and a school of canon law exists, canon law in Russia may be
described as a mere substitute for the real thing: interpreters of the Apostolic
Canons operate according to the principle of “Whatever you wish, Your Grace.”
If a bishop wishes to condemn someone, the task of the canon law specialist is
to find a canonical provision that would justify the decision already made by
the bishop.
“Back in the 1990s,” Chapnin
says, “we were already discussing the need to revive the ecclesiastical court
as an institution. Even before Kirill, the Regulations
on Ecclesiastical Courts had been adopted. First, according to these
regulations, there is the diocesan court, consisting of priests appointed by
the bishop. Second, there is the Supreme Ecclesiastical Court, consisting of
bishops elected by the Council of Bishops. One can appeal to the Supreme Court
if one disagrees with a decision of the diocesan court. The decisions of the
Supreme Court can, in turn, be challenged before the Council of Bishops, which
serves as the highest judicial authority.”
In practice, however, it has
become apparent that none of the deposed priests interviewed by Sistema had
appealed either to the Supreme Ecclesiastical Court or to the Council of
Bishops. Instead, they appeal directly to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew.
“Indeed,” Chapnin told Sistema,
“there remains a medieval legal provision enshrined in the canons, according to
which, if a priest disagrees with the decision of a court of his Local Church,
he may appeal to the court of the Ecumenical Patriarch, that is, the Patriarch
of Constantinople. This is the highest judicial authority in world Orthodoxy.
“For a long time, this provision
appeared to be a dead letter. With regard to the Russian Orthodox Church, it
had not been invoked for centuries. Then suddenly, beginning with the case
of Fr. Ivan Koval, this provision came back to life. The Greeks considered it
permissible to restore to the priesthood priests who had been deposed by the
Russian Church. Priests opposed to the war, as well as priests deposed as a
result of intrigues within the Russian Orthodox Church, now had an opportunity
to be restored to the priesthood.”
At the same time, it would be
mistaken to think that the restoration of a deposed priest to the priesthood
can be an automatic or even a simple procedure. And the Moscow Patriarchate, it
seems, understands this very well.
Deacon Andrei Kuraev told Sistema
that his deposition from the diaconate, even before the full-scale war in
Ukraine, was arranged by the Patriarch in such a way as to create a legal
deadlock. In 2020, the Patriarch confirmed the deposition but immediately
imposed a moratorium
on the decision. Kuraev believes that this paradoxical decision was made
precisely to deprive the deacon of any legal grounds for appealing to the
Patriarch of Constantinople. Kuraev remained in this state of uncertainty for
two years, until the full-scale war began, priests started being deposed by the
dozens, and Kuraev’s case ceased to be unique.
Fr. Alexei Uminsky also told Sistema
that his appeal to the Ecumenical Patriarch, restoration to the priesthood, and
the search for a new place of ministry as a priest of the Patriarchate of
Constantinople took more than a year. There is no simple procedure: personal
connections were needed, along with assistance from fellow clergy in France and
Belgium, a personal meeting with Patriarch Bartholomew, and the search for a
parish willing to receive the priest once he had been restored to the
priesthood. Only then did his restoration take place.
Fr. Vladimir Selyavko says that
the restoration of the Lithuanian priests to the priesthood was greatly
facilitated by the intervention
of the country’s Prime Minister, Ingrida Šimonytė, and the visit of Patriarch
Bartholomew to Lithuania. These developments, however, did not eliminate the considerable
bureaucratic complications or the need to translate all the priests’ documents
from Russian and Lithuanian into English.
Recently, a Moscow cleric who
wished to remain anonymous (for fear of being deposed from the priesthood) told
Sistema that “the Patriarchate has realized that it should only suspend
priests from serving, rather than depose them from the priesthood, so that they
cannot appeal to the Ecumenical Patriarch.” At least one such case of a legal
deadlock is indeed known—the case
of Fr. Konstantin Kokora, who emigrated to France. He cannot serve there,
however, because he was not deposed from the priesthood in Moscow, but merely
suspended from serving.
Exile and Divorce
For dozens of priests opposed to
the war, deposition from the priesthood and subsequent restoration are not
simply unpleasant bureaucratic procedures, comparable to a layman losing his
job and searching for another. For a priest, deposition is not merely a
prohibition against practicing his profession. Fr. Vladimir Selyavko told Sistema
that it is like being exiled to a distant and unfamiliar country while
simultaneously going through a divorce and losing one's rights to one's
children—an instantaneous and radical upheaval of one's entire way of life.
“Perhaps I really was a bad
deacon,” Fr. Andrei Kuraev told Sistema, and there is profound
bitterness in his words.
Fr. Alexei Uminsky describes his
separation from his flock, the parishioners of the Church of the Holy Trinity
in Khokhly, as a separation from his family. The Patriarchate of Constantinople
restored Fr. Alexei to the priesthood, assigned him a place of ministry—the
Church of the Icon of the Mother of God of the Sign in Paris—and even provided
him with a small apartment above the church. But it does not pay him a salary.
The priest has to earn his living through lectures
and sermons on social media.
And Fr. Vladimir Selyavko says:
“I chose to go through with this myself. My conscience compelled me to do so.
But it feels as though you are walking, on your own two feet, into an operating
room where they are going to amputate something. You will wake up a different
person.”
“You see, I come from a very
conservative family, something like the Lithuanian Amish,
only Orthodox. I dreamed of becoming a priest from childhood, from the age of
six,” he explains. “There are hundreds of people whom I baptized, whose
marriages I celebrated, whose parents I buried, and now they will not even
greet me. When they see me, they cross to the other side of the street. I have
literally lost people close to me: my uncle, who is a priest, no longer speaks
to me; one of my brothers does not speak to me, nor does my father-in-law, who
is also a priest. I cannot even visit my father’s grave in peace, because to do
so I would have to enter the grounds of a parish community that no longer
accepts me.”
As a priest of the Patriarchate
of Constantinople, Fr. Vladimir serves in a church that was converted into a
concert hall during the Soviet era. There is no iconostasis, but there is a
stage. Every Sunday morning, Fr. Vladimir takes a folding analogion, a couple
of stands for icons, and candle stands out of a storage room. After the
service, he puts all these “church furnishings” back into the storeroom.
Construction of a church for the Lithuanian Exarchate of the Patriarchate of
Constantinople in Vilnius is still only being discussed with the authorities.
After serving a flock of many
thousands at the cathedral in Vilnius, Fr. Vladimir now has about twenty people
attending his services. And the priest says he rejoices whenever his flock
grows—even if only by one person.
Russian
source:
https://www.currenttime.tv/amp/sud-bozhiy-kak-rpts-raspravlyaetsya-s-nesoglasnymi-svyaschennikami-v-tom-chisle-temi-kto-ne-podderzhal-voynu-s-ukrainoy/33762591.html
