Did Fr. Seraphim Cover Up Abuse?

On the truth about Fr. Seraphim and the alleged cover up of the sins of Herman Podmosenky.

Silouan Wright

 

 

With the prospect of his glorification, accusations have resurfaced that Fr. Seraphim Rose knowingly covered up the sexual misconduct of his co-founder, Gleb Podmoshensky (later "Fr. Herman"). Blog posts and Substack articles repeat the claims as settled fact.

Here are 12 points to consider.

1. The entire argument against Fr. Seraphim Rose relies on the testimony of Reader Daniel Everiss and Fr. Alexey Young. Both men explicitly exonerated Fr. Seraphim and remained devoted to him until the end. The accusers cannot make their case without contradicting their own witnesses.

2. Reader Daniel Everiss is the star witness against Fr. Herman. He maintained the blog (which is still online) that excoriated, criticized, and named those in ROCOR who protected and justified what Fr. Herman Podmoshensky did. Reader Daniel was among 4-6 accusers who gave sworn, signed testimonies kissing the Gospel and Cross before Archbishop Anthony, in the presence of two or three priests. [1] He was himself a personal victim of Podmoshensky:

"He [Fr. Herman] harmed many souls, myself included. He drove me away from his Platina Monastery. He drove only God knows, how many wounded souls, especially of young men, from the Church, even from God."

Fr. Herman Podmoshensky in response blacklisted him:

"'That scum Everiss!' — this he repeated over many years to many."

Reader Daniel endured forty years of isolation for telling the truth. He died in 2023, having never recanted a word.

3. Reader Daniel Everiss was extremely critical of almost everyone BUT Fr. Seraphim Rose. The entire argument against Fr. Seraphim requires using the very words of Reader Daniel while completely dismissing the same man's glowing endorsement of Fr. Seraphim. Reader Daniel wrote:

"I KNOW such was not the case! Fr. Seraphim and Herman Podmoshensky were/are two, VERY different people. Fr. Seraphim was the true self-abnegating ascetic, and poor Fr. Herman... just playing his own pompous deluded/in prelest, 'Holy Starets' role."

And again from Reader Daniel:

"Furthermore, I have hard evidence, gathered from different sources, that Fr. Seraphim was not guilty of the sins of his brother, as some foolish people who did not know him, have wrongly imagined. Fr. Seraphim was an angel in the flesh."

And again:

"I saw absolutely no signs at all, that he [Fr. Seraphim Rose] led any secret unspiritual life-style, though as it proved to be later on, Fr. Herman ...did."

All who continue to use the name and arguments of Reader Daniel have to explicitly contradict him.

4. Reader Daniel Everiss, who bluntly critiqued ROCOR for not acting, called Fr. Seraphim Rose "an angel in the flesh." How can one use Reader Daniel's testimony against Fr. Seraphim Rose and completely ignore whom Reader Daniel himself said was responsible and accountable for not acting? Credibility is not selective. Either a witness is credible or he is not. The Pokrov Truth Substack (which everyone is deferring to in the pursuit of slandering Fr. Seraphim Rose) itself calls Reader Daniel "a courageous truthspeaker" whose "validity and sincerity as a reliable source is unquestioned," and then it immediately uses his testimony to argue the exact opposite of what Daniel intended and believed.

5. The documentary record rules out a long-term coverup. Fr. Seraphim's last surviving letter (early June 1982, three months before his death) mentions Fr. Herman casually and collaboratively. [13] Across 617 pages of published letters spanning twenty years of correspondence, not a single letter hints at knowledge of misconduct. Fr. Alexey Young's Russian-language memoir places the moment Fr. Seraphim learned something alarming approximately six months before his death: a novice reported that Fr. Herman had approached him and said things "that cannot be repeated." [7] Fr. Alexey describes Fr. Seraphim as devastated by this news: "His illness probably opened up because of this terrible news. After all, this meant the end of the monastery. The monastery would simply be closed if such news had reached the bishop." [7] His language is that of a fresh wound, not of a man who has been managing a known secret for years. The "long-term coverup" narrative has no documentary support whatsoever.

6. Hieromonk Damascene's biography documents that "every evening after services, Fr. Seraphim remained in church to hear the brothers unburden their souls privately to him." [2] The brothers did revelation of thoughts with Fr. Seraphim four to five times weekly. Blessed Paisius Velichkovsky, whose rule governed this practice, explicitly called it "confession." [3] Thus: if Fr. Seraphim learned about the matter of Fr. Herman, it is very likely that he learned about it under the seal of confession. Those who demand he should have "spoken up" are demanding that he commit a canonical crime. The canons are explicit: a confessor may not divulge the sins confessed to him; if he does so and the penitent denies it, the confessor's testimony carries no weight; and a priest who breaks the seal faces suspension or outright deposition from the priesthood. [4]

St. Nikodemos the Hagiorite: "Nothing else remains after confession, Spiritual Father, except to keep the sins you hear a secret, and to never reveal them, either by word, or by letter, or by a bodily gesture, or by any other sign, even if you are in danger of death." [5] Saint Paisios the Athonite: "Is it ever permitted to reveal the confession of another? Absolutely not!" [6]

Fr. Seraphim could not reveal what was confessed to him, even if his very life was in danger. He did what he could within the bounds of the canons: Fr. Seraphim "forbade this novice to be alone with Fr. Herman." [7] according to Fr. Alexey Young. The accusers are asking us to condemn a man for obeying the Holy Canons.

7. What exactly do critics expect Fr. Seraphim to have done? Write a newspaper article? Publish it in a book? Fr. Herman was the abbot of the monastery, officially appointed as Superior by Archbishop Anthony himself in 1975. [2] In monastic life, nothing happens without the blessing of the superior. A monk cannot act independently against his own abbot; the only proper course of action was to bring the matter to the bishop above them both. And we already know what happened when Archbishop Anthony received exactly that kind of testimony from multiple sworn witnesses after Fr. Seraphim's death: he "did not want to believe them and did not press these particular charges." [8] Anthony showed the testimonies to Fr. Herman, who "swore on the Bible that it was untrue." Anthony believed him. He gave Fr. Herman more than two years before suspension while the Synod wanted him defrocked earlier. So even if Fr. Seraphim told Archbishop Anthony everything, the result would have been the same. The full answer to everything these critics demand is already in the historical record, and it indicts the hierarchy, not Fr. Seraphim.

Further, we must consider how many assumptions the accusation requires. We must assume Fr. Seraphim did not tell Archbishop Anthony. We must assume he did not direct those who confessed to him to approach the archbishop themselves. We must assume the two men never discussed the matter. We must assume the information came outside the seal of confession. Every one of these assumptions contradicts the available evidence or cannot be verified. And against all of them stands one documented fact: when Archbishop Anthony did receive sworn testimony from multiple witnesses after Fr. Seraphim's death, he still dragged his feet and believed Fr. Herman's denial. The accusation requires a tower of unproven assumptions; the defense rests on what actually happened.

8. The double standard among those who repeat these accusations is staggering. The ROCOR Ecclesiastical Court's own published decision praised Archbishop Anthony's delay as pastoral patience: "he did not rush to proceed with an Ecclesiastical Court, so as to give Fr. Herman time for repentance." [9] Anthony's obituary in Orthodox Life contained three eulogies praising his humility; the Podmoshensky affair was never mentioned. No ROCOR Synod resolution ever criticized Anthony for delay or leniency. The institution commended his inaction as virtue and eulogized him without qualification. Archbishop Anthony himself, on Forgiveness Sunday in the Novi Sobor in San Francisco, wept and bowed to the congregation, asking them to "forgive me for my not being a good or wise bishop" in regards to Herman and Platina. [1] Even the bishop admitted he failed. Worse: Reader Daniel reveals that Archbishop Anthony issued "an order of temporary silence" to the witnesses themselves. [11] The bishop received the sworn testimonies, acknowledged the problem, and then ordered the victims to stay quiet. And yet a dying hieromonk with no canonical authority, whose star witness calls him "an angel in the flesh," is the one these slanderers choose to put on trial and insult. The Pokrov Truth blog, at least, is consistent in critiquing ROCOR's institutional failures. But the vast majority of people sharing these accusations do not. They will not critique the bishop because critiquing a hierarch carries actual institutional consequences. They will critique a dead hieromonk because it costs them nothing, and because Fr. Seraphim spoke against them in his writings.

9. Fr. Seraphim Rose had absolutely no motive to protect Fr. Herman. About six months before his death, he said "he was never happier than when Fr. Herman was off on one of his many trips," for then, he said, "we have peace, quiet, and order at the Skete." [8] According to Reader Daniel, Fr. Seraphim said that if he survived another year, he would leave Fr. Herman. When Fr. Herman openly told a group at a St. Herman Summer Pilgrimage that homosexuality was "commonly accepted" in Orthodox village life, Fr. Seraphim left the lecture in obvious and open disgust. [1] Fr. Alexey Young, who knew both men personally, writes in his memoir: "He [Fr. Seraphim] touched other people only when he blessed, and never again. Father Herman, on the contrary, immediately tried to grab the interlocutor into his arms when they met." [7] These were two fundamentally different men. And this was a volatile situation: when the accusations finally came, Fr. Herman reportedly threatened to shoot Archbishop Anthony, a claim corroborated independently by the academic record. [14] This is the unstable man Fr. Seraphim was living under. These critics, from the safety of their keyboards, presume to judge a monk trapped in a remote monastery with a dangerous superior and a bishop who would later admit he failed.

Further, those who have read Fr. Seraphim Rose know that he was without fear. In his writings he criticizes GOARCH, ROCOR, the OCA, the Moscow Patriarchate, the Serbians, the Antiochians, the Old Calendarists, the Paris school, the World Council of Churches, and modernist Orthodox seminaries. He critiqued Patriarch Athenagoras, Archbishop Iakovos, Metropolitan Nikodim (Patriarch Kirill's own mentor), Fr. Alexander Schmemann, Fr. John Meyendorff, Fr. Panteleimon of Boston, and his own ROCOR bishops by name. He called institutional compliance "spiritually illegitimate" [10] and "slavery to men." [11] He even said of Archbishop Anthony himself: "a 'quencher of the spirit'... He is an excellent 'peacemaker,' but he crushes every good initiative." [12]

Therefore: a man planning to leave his own monastery, who called obedience to corrupt institutions slavery, who spoke critically of Fr. Herman and of his own bishop, who called out jurisdictions and notable persons, has zero motive to cover up anything for institutional self-preservation.

10. The circulating "full story" against Fr. Seraphim Rose links rely on the testimony of a schismatic Old Calendarist "archbishop" (Gregory Abu-Asaly of the self-created "Genuine Orthodox Church of America"). [15] Consider what this man actually says in the video that Pokrov Truth promotes as "a valid source to take into consideration":

He renders the deathbed words as "I curse you" (30:44), a version found in no written source. The documented words, per Fr. Alexey Young, are "I'm finished with you. Damn you!" [8] He repeats his version three times in the video. He then fabricates the entire deathbed scene: in his telling, Fr. Seraphim "comes out of a coma, sees Father Herman, says 'I curse you, get away from me,' fell back into a coma and died" (30:36-31:04). The documented reality, per both Hieromonk Damascene and Fr. Alexey Young, is a man with tubes passed into his mouth, arms spread apart and tied to the bed, needles of IV drips in his veins, unable to move or speak. [27]

He insinuates that Fr. Seraphim's fatal intestinal illness was caused by his pre-conversion homosexuality: "And is it because of his past incontinence, we don't know, but he had a pain there" (28:45-29:01). Fr. Seraphim came to the faith from a sinful past, as many of us have. He repented. He converted. Everyone who knew him, including Reader Daniel, the star witness against Fr. Herman, testifies that Fr. Seraphim became wholly ascetic, wholly dispassionate: "an angel in the flesh." The Orthodox Church has many saints who committed grave sins before their conversion. St. Mary of Egypt lived in sin for decades. Abu-Asaly is drawing a crude connection between the location of the illness and the nature of the pre-conversion sin. Imagine a female saint who lived in sin before her conversion and later died of cancer. Imagine a man going on camera and insinuating that the cancer was connected to the sins she used to commit. That is what this man is doing. He is not a clairvoyant. He has no medical knowledge. He has no spiritual authority. He sat in a room, thought about the past sexual sins of a dead man, formed a crude anatomical theory, and published it on the internet. The Holy Fathers condemn this as gossip, and anyone who repeats these insinuations shares in it.

This is the same man who declared Fr. Seraphim "in prelest" because he did not comb his beard. He is not insulting a layman. He is insulting a hieromonk of the canonical Church, a priest and monk who showed no signs of his former life after conversion, a man every witness calls completely dispassionate, and one who will soon (God willing) be glorified as a saint.

In the same video, he claims, without any source, that Fr. Herman intercepted letters from Fr. Seraphim's "former lover" and planned to publish them to expose him (39:48). He claims the teaching of the aerial toll houses is "Gnostic" and "condemned by the ecumenical councils" (23:50), a teaching attested by St. Athanasius the Great, St. John Chrysostom, St. Basil the Great, St. Cyril of Alexandria, St. Ephraim the Syrian, St. John Climacus, St. Mark of Ephesus, St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov), St. Theophan the Recluse, St. John of Shanghai, and many others, hymned in the liturgical texts of the Church, and given comprehensive treatment in St. Anthony's Greek Orthodox Monastery's volume The Departure of the Soul.

This is the man the accusers cite. Anyone who shares the opinions of this schismatic and treats him as a credible witness has no interest in truth, accountability, or Orthodoxy.

The author of the Pokrov Truth Substack writes under the pseudonym "The Grand Inquisitor." In his own post endorsing the video, he acknowledges that Abu-Asaly's "fundamentalist views about baptism, ecumenism and who is, and is not a heretic, are not in accordance with established, mainstream positions of the canonical Orthodox Churches." He writes this, and then in the very next sentence calls him "a valid source to take into consideration." He knowingly promoted the video of a schismatic who fabricates deathbed quotes, insinuates that a hieromonk's fatal illness was divine punishment for sins he repented of decades earlier, and contradicts the consensus of the Fathers.

11. So we must ask: why are these accusations coming forward? The evidence does not support the accusation. The star witness contradicts it. The canons explain the silence. The hierarchy bears the documented responsibility. When someone persists despite all of this, the question is no longer about evidence. It is about motivation. You can see it plainly: they quote nothing else Reader Daniel said. Not his decades of posts naming those who protected Fr. Herman. Not his indictment of Archbishop Anthony's foot-dragging. Not his account of being blacklisted, shunned, and driven into isolation for telling the truth. Not his explicit exoneration of Fr. Seraphim Rose. They extract one fragment and discard the rest. Reader Daniel himself saw it coming. He wrote that Fr. Herman "even has caused some to disparage Fr. Seraphim, who himself was a sincere true ascetic and priest." [1] The pattern speaks for itself: they do not want Fr. Seraphim Rose glorified. They do not care about Fr. Herman. They care about what Fr. Seraphim Rose himself stood for: uncompromising Orthodoxy that spared no institution, no hierarch, and no theological fashion from criticism. That is what they cannot tolerate, and Fr. Herman's sins are merely the instrument they have found to use against him.

12. The aftermath proves that Fr. Seraphim did not enable Fr. Herman; he restrained him. Reader Daniel, who was present at the all-night vigil over Fr. Seraphim's coffin, writes that Fr. Herman:

"was totally out of his mind with remorse and guilt and weeping and self-accusation, kneeling down many times at night, in front of the coffin and trying to tell Fr. Seraphim that he was sorry." [1]

That is the behavior of a man who knew his brother disapproved, who felt accountable to him, and who lost the one person keeping him in check. Within two years of Fr. Seraphim's death, Fr. Herman was suspended from the priesthood. Within six years, he was defrocked. He then fled to the jurisdiction of Metropolitan Pangratios Vrionis, a Greek priest defrocked by the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America in December 1970 after pleading guilty to sodomizing two 14-year-old boys; Pangratios was arrested again in April 2002 for the alleged 1999 sexual assault of another 14-year-old boy. [14] That is who Fr. Herman chose to align with once Fr. Seraphim's restraining influence was gone. Sixteen years of partnership produced a brotherhood; six years without Fr. Seraphim produced a defrocked priest sheltering under a convicted pedophile. The accusation that Fr. Seraphim enabled Fr. Herman has the evidence exactly backwards.

If these people cared about the victims, they would be talking about what the victims talked about. For them, the victims are simply tools to be used to achieve their aims of slandering a saint under the guise of "seeking accountability."

I would encourage the faithful, whenever they see these accusations repeated against Fr. Seraphim Rose, to share this post (you have permission) and to ask the accusers to address the evidence presented here. Let us not allow the memory of our saints and elders to be defamed without answer.

---

1. Reader Daniel Everiss. Sworn testimonies and personal account: blog post, December 7, 2012, https://readerdanielsharing.blogspot.com/.../not-of-this... "Angel in the flesh," "hard evidence," and "'That scum Everiss!'": blog post, July 1, 2014, https://readerdanielsharing.blogspot.com/.../death-of-fr.... "I KNOW such was not the case" and "I saw absolutely no signs at all": "In Fr. Seraphim's Defense," https://startingontheroyalpath.blogspot.com/.../in-fr...

2. Hieromonk Damascene, Father Seraphim Rose: His Life and Works, ch. 66, "Brothers."

3. Life of Blessed Paisius Velichkovsky, quoted in Damascene, p. 529.

4. Canon 132 (141 in the Pedalion) of Carthage; Canon 34 of St. Basil the Great; Canon 27 of St. Nikephoros the Confessor. Together they establish the principle that a confessor may not reveal what is confessed to him. The penalty of deposition is stated by St. Nikodemos the Hagiorite in his commentary on the practice (Exomologetarion, Ch. 12).

5. St. Nikodemos the Hagiorite, Exomologetarion, Ch. 12: "That the Spiritual Father Is Not to Reveal Sins," trans. George Dokos (Uncut Mountain Press, 2006), p. 107. The same chapter records the incident under Patriarch Nektarios of Constantinople (381-397), when a spiritual father revealed a woman's confession and the faithful were so scandalized they refused to confess at all. St. John Chrysostom personally witnessed the fallout and labored to convince the people to return to the sacrament.

6. Elder Paisios the Athonite, Spiritual Counsels, Vol. 3: Spiritual Struggle, p. 297.

7. Fr. Alexey Young, Russian-language memoir, recorded August 20-21, 1998, posted 2007. https://seraphim-rose.livejournal.com/7683.html

8. Fr. Alexey Young, review of Not of This World, Orthodox America, Vol. XIV, Issue 126-127. https://roca.org/.../from-the-bookshelf-not-of-this.../

9. Orthodox Life, Vol. 43, No. 5 (1993), Ecclesiastical Court excerpt, pp. 44-45; Orthodox Life, Vol. 50, No. 5 (2000), Archbishop Anthony obituary eulogies.

10. Letters of Fr. Seraphim Rose, p. 125.

11. Letters of Fr. Seraphim Rose, p. 322.

12. Letters of Fr. Seraphim Rose, p. 128.

13. Letters of Fr. Seraphim Rose, Letter #326, early June 1982 (the last surviving letter).

14. D. Oliver Herbel, Turning to Tradition: Converts and the Making of an American Orthodox Church (Oxford University Press, 2013), Chapter 3; Phillip Charles Lucas, "Enfants Terribles: The Challenge of Sectarian Converts to Ethnic Orthodox Churches in the United States," Nova Religio 7, no. 2 (November 2003), reposted by ROCOR Studies: https://www.rocorstudies.org/.../enfants-terribles-the.../. See also New York Post, April 19, 2002: https://www.culteducation.com/.../4691-bishops-unholy-act...

15. Gregory Abu-Asaly, "Father Seraphim Rose," YouTube (GOC America channel), August 5, 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpMb94cGW0w. Timestamps cited in text. Pokrov Truth endorsed this video on April 27, 2026: https://pokrovtruth.substack.com/.../video-fr-seraphim...

 

Source: posted and shared on the author’s Facebook account, May 9, 2026.