Old Calendar Bulgarian Church “liquidation” halted

ANNOUNCEMENT FROM THE CHANCERY OF THE HIERARCHICAL SYNOD OF THE BULGARIAN ORTHODOX OLD CALENDAR CHURCH

October 2, 2026

 

 

Beloved brothers and sisters in the Lord!

By a decision of October 1, 2026, the Supreme Court of Cassation (SCC) set aside the decision of the lower court ordering the commencement of liquidation proceedings and the deregistration of the legal entity representing the Old Calendar Orthodox Church of Bulgaria, and remanded the case for a new hearing.

The Court rejects the view that the termination of this legal entity occurred automatically by operation of the amendments to the Religious Denominations Act of January 2025, and holds that this issue must be resolved in adversarial judicial proceedings.

In its reasoning, the Supreme Court of Cassation emphasizes the importance of freedom of religion. According to the Court, the termination of the religious institution would affect both its rights as a legal entity and the constitutionally guaranteed individual right to freedom of religion of each of its members, which also includes the right freely to associate on a religious basis through the registration of a religious community.

It should be noted that the decision of the Supreme Court of Cassation does not dismiss the claims brought by the Prosecutor’s Office and the Directorate of Religious Denominations, nor does it resolve on the merits the dispute concerning the registration of the Old Calendar Orthodox Church of Bulgaria (OCOCB). Nor does the Court rule on whether the statutory prohibition on the use of the word “Orthodox” in the name of the OCOCB is compatible with the freedom of religion guaranteed by the Constitution and international law. These issues are to be examined in the new judicial proceedings. Until those proceedings are concluded, the registration of the legal entity representing the OCOCB remains in force.

From the Chancery of the Hierarchical Synod

 

Bulgarian source: https://bulgarian-orthodox-church.org/ch-life/official/message20261002.html

 

MP Commentator: On the 20th Anniversary of ROCOR’s “Suspension” of Eucharistic Communion with the Bulgarian and Romanian Old Calendarists

Alexey Rodinov | September 6, 2026

 

 

On September 6, 2006, the Synod of Bishops of ROCOR adopted a resolution suspending communion with the Bulgarian and Romanian Old Calendarist Churches. I will quote from the book by Andrei Kostryukov, Doctor of Historical Sciences, published in 2024, “History of the Russian Church Abroad (1920–2007): A Textbook”:

The severance of ROCOR’s communion with the Old Calendarist groups in Greece, Bulgaria, and Romania was one of the principal conditions set by the Moscow Patriarchate. The Moscow Patriarchate’s commission proposed that the Church Abroad approach the hierarchy of the Old Calendarist communities with a proposal to reconsider their relations with the Local Churches in whose territories they operated and to begin negotiations on communion. For its part, the Moscow Patriarchate was prepared to appeal to the heads of the Local Churches to enter into negotiations in a spirit of economia. The letter drafted by ROCOR was approved at the meetings of the commissions and sent to the addressees. No reply was received—the Old Calendarist groups’ opposition to the negotiations between the Moscow Patriarchate and ROCOR was well known. Moreover, the problem in the relations between the Old Calendarist groups and their respective Local Churches concerned not only, and not so much, the calendar as ecumenism and modernism.

Since 2001, the Greek “Synod in Resistance” under Metropolitan Cyprian (Koutsoumbas) had repeatedly addressed ROCOR with objections to its rapprochement with the Moscow Patriarchate. After negotiations began in 2004, Metropolitan Laurus’s name was removed from the diptychs of the “Synod in Resistance,” and in October 2005 it adopted a decision “to sever ecclesiastical communion with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia completely and decisively.” However, this decision was communicated to the Church Abroad only on December 5, 2005. For its part, on December 8, 2005, the Synod of Bishops of ROCOR decided to suspend communion with the “Synod in Resistance” pending a decision on the matter by the Council of Bishops. The question of continued communion with the Bulgarian and Romanian Old Calendarists also needed to be resolved. It was psychologically difficult for the leadership of the Russian Church Abroad to sever relations with them. (Kostryukov, A. A. History of the Russian Church Abroad: 1920–2007: A Textbook. Moscow: St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University Press, 2024, pp. 418–419.)

At its regular meeting held in New York from February 21 to 23, 2006, the Synod of Bishops of ROCOR adopted, among others, the following resolution:

Having heard the report of Mitred Archpriest Alexander Lebedev, secretary of the commission for negotiations with the Moscow Patriarchate, His Eminence the President and the Right Reverend members of the Synod of Bishops expressed satisfaction with the work accomplished by this commission during the intervening period, as well as gratitude to its members for their labors. The Synod of Bishops decided to express special gratitude to Mitred Archpriest George Larin and Ekaterina Yuryevna Larina and their assistants for their labors and efforts in arranging the latest joint meeting of the church commissions, held at the Church of the Protection of the Mother of God in Nyack.

On February 21 [2006], the Synod of Bishops considered the latest letter from Metropolitan Cyprian of Oropos and Fili and the Holy “Synod in Resistance,” which announced that their Holy Synod had resolved to terminate completely and decisively all ecclesiastical communion with the Russian Church Abroad. According to this letter, the name of His Eminence Metropolitan Laurus, First Hierarch of the Russian Church Abroad, “was removed from the diptychs” last year. In view of this, the Synod of Bishops resolved to recognize communion with the “Synod in Resistance,” presided over by Metropolitan Cyprian, as severed. The Primates of the Old Calendarist Churches of Romania and Bulgaria will be informed of this through a clergyman of the Russian Church Abroad dispatched for this purpose. (Source)

On April 20, 2006, an official report on this trip to Romania and Bulgaria appeared on the official website of the ROCOR Synod. But since Archpriest Alexander Lebedev knows neither the local languages nor the realities of church life in Romania and Bulgaria, I had to make corrections to the text, rectifying obvious errors in names and place names, adjusting the style here and there, and adding explanations [in square brackets]:

In accordance with a resolution of the Synod of Bishops of the Russian Church Abroad, Mitred Archpriest Alexander Lebedev was sent to Romania and Bulgaria for official meetings with the Primates of the Romanian and Bulgarian Old Calendarist Churches. On the way, at the direction of His Eminence Metropolitan Laurus, Mitred Archpriest Alexander Lebedev visited Switzerland, where he met with His Grace Bishop Ambrose [Cantacuzène] of Vevey and gave His Grace a detailed report on the progress of negotiations with the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate.

Mitred Archpriest Alexander Lebedev arrived in Romania on Monday, April 10 [2006], where he was met at Bucharest Airport by Archimandrite Cyprian, abbot of the Old Calendarist monastery in Galata [a historic district of the city of Iași]. From there they traveled to the Moldavian region of Romania, to the town of Fălticeni, arriving that evening at the home of the local parish priest, Archpriest Vasile Sandu. After viewing the very beautiful church, Mitred Archpriest Alexander and those accompanying him went to the rector’s house, where His Eminence Metropolitan Vlasie [Mogârzan], Primate of the Romanian Old Calendarist Church, arrived shortly afterward.

The meeting with Metropolitan Vlasie, conducted through Archimandrite Cyprian as interpreter, who has a good command of English, lasted almost four hours and took place in a spirit of respect and mutual understanding. Mitred Archpriest Alexander acquainted His Eminence with the contents of the letter addressed to him by the Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia and signed by His Eminence Metropolitan Laurus, and heard his response, which expressed the position of the Romanian Old Calendarist Church. The rector of Holy Transfiguration Cathedral in Los Angeles answered His Eminence Metropolitan Vlasie’s questions about the work of the commissions conducting negotiations between the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate.

Metropolitan Vlasie asked that his gratitude be conveyed to His Eminence Metropolitan Laurus and the Synod of Bishops of the Russian Church Abroad for approaching him through a personal representative of the Synod of Bishops, and said that he would soon send an official reply to their letter. A second official meeting, this time with other members of the Synod of the Romanian Old Calendarist Church participating, was scheduled for the following morning, Tuesday, April 11, at Slătioara Monastery.

During the day, Archpriest Alexander Lebedev, accompanied by Archimandrite Cyprian, visited several parish churches in Romanian Moldavia, as well as the Convent of the Protection of the Mother of God in Brădățel, where he met with the superior, Abbess Barbara. He also met that day with two other hierarchs of the Romanian Old Calendarist Church, Bishops Pahomie [Morar] and Demostene [Ioniță]. On the way back to Bucharest, Father Alexander and Father Cyprian passed an enormous equestrian monument to the Russian general Suvorov, who is greatly revered in Romania.

Arriving in Bucharest late that evening, Archpriest Alexander Lebedev had the opportunity to attend the nighttime service at the Old Calendarist monastery of the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos, where, according to the typikon, the Midnight Office and Matins begin at precisely midnight. On the morning of Wednesday, April 12, Archpriest Alexander Lebedev had the opportunity to tour the monastery and its working facilities. The monastery has a workshop for cutting and polishing marble and granite, fully equipped with modern machinery. The monks produce components for churches under construction, as well as cemetery monuments.

At midday, Archpriest Alexander Lebedev took a short flight from Romania to Bulgaria, where he was met at Sofia Airport by the rassophore monk Panteleimon. Father Alexander was touched to see that a large building at the airport exit bore the Church Slavonic word “Mitnitsa.” This is the local customs office, where, evidently, “publicans” continue to work to this day.

Upon arriving at the episcopal residence on the outskirts of Sofia, Archpriest Alexander Lebedev was welcomed by His Grace Bishop Photii [Siromahov] of Triaditsa, Primate of the Bulgarian Old Calendarist Church, who speaks excellent Russian. The formal discussion was scheduled for the following morning. There were, however, several opportunities to speak with Bishop Photii informally. During the official meeting on Thursday, April 13, the secretary of the commission for negotiations with the Moscow Patriarchate read aloud and delivered the letter addressed to His Grace Bishop Photii by the Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia and signed by His Eminence Metropolitan Laurus, and listened to Bishop Photii’s thoughts on its contents.

The meeting with His Grace Bishop Photii took place in a spirit of sincerity and mutual understanding. His Grace Bishop Photii expressed his gratitude to His Eminence Metropolitan Laurus and the Synod of Bishops of the Russian Church Abroad for approaching him through a personal representative of the Synod of Bishops. He asked that it be conveyed that he would closely follow the decisions of the forthcoming Fourth All-Diaspora Council and the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia immediately following it, on the basis of which he would make his own decision.

In the afternoon, Archpriest Alexander Lebedev had the opportunity to visit some of the sights of the Bulgarian capital, including the Russian Orthodox Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. In the crypt of this exceptionally beautiful prerevolutionary church lies the tomb of the ever-memorable Archbishop Seraphim (Sobolev), who reposed in blessedness in 1950. Archbishop Seraphim is deeply venerated among the Bulgarian people, and crowds come every day to pray at his tomb and leave little notes with their prayer requests.

Archpriest Alexander Lebedev also had the opportunity to visit Bulgaria’s principal church—the Cathedral of St. Alexander Nevsky, built as a memorial church to the Russian people and especially to Tsar Alexander II, the Liberator. The cathedral stands on the central square, opposite an enormous equestrian monument to Tsar Alexander II, at the foot of which is a large inscription: “To the Tsar Liberator, from Grateful Bulgaria.” The main street itself is called “Tsar Osvoboditel Boulevard” [Boulevard of the Tsar Liberator]. In the crypt of Alexander Nevsky Cathedral is a magnificent permanent exhibition of Bulgarian icons and church furnishings dating from the tenth century to recent times.

Archpriest Alexander Lebedev had the opportunity to attend services at the monastery attached to the episcopal residence, as well as at the large Old Calendarist Cathedral [of the Dormition] in Sofia. After the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts on Friday, April 14, Archpriest Alexander Lebedev set out on his return journey via London to Los Angeles, arriving in time for the All-Night Vigil on the eve of Palm Sunday. (Source)

Note that Archpriest Alexander Lebedev merely “visited” and “was present” at services in Romania and Bulgaria, but never once concelebrated. In other words, communion had already been severed de facto by that point. There was, however, no talk yet of contacts with the New Calendarist Romanian and Bulgarian Churches. Bishop Photii (Siromahov) spoke about this meeting in November 2006 in far less diplomatic terms:

Unfortunately, the dialogue between the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia and the Moscow Patriarchate proceeded entirely along a single track, on a basis wholly unacceptable from the standpoint of a consistent and principled Orthodox ecclesial consciousness. I stated this in an appropriate manner, but quite openly, to the official representative of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, Archpriest Alexander Lebedev, who visited our Church in April of this year to inform us officially of the progress of the dialogue between the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia and the Moscow Patriarchate. It is obvious that the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia itself will break off relations with us, perhaps without even announcing this officially: only yesterday we were, in its eyes, a sister Church with which it enjoyed full ecclesiastical communion, while tomorrow we will be, in its eyes, a sectarian, schismatic gathering outside the Church, because it will enter into communion with the Moscow Patriarchate and, through it, with all the other Local Churches. We remain firm in our positions, while the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, in the person of its hierarchy, is changing its position by 180 degrees. (Source)

In his letter to the Synod of Bishops of ROCOR dated June 29, 2007, the tone was even sharper:

“As for me personally, during our official conversation, Archpriest Alexander Lebedev asked me directly how I viewed the possibility of heading an Old Calendarist diocese incorporating all our parishes, churches, and monasteries within the Bulgarian Patriarchate. I replied that such an approach was unacceptable to me in principle, since it transfers the logic of Latin uniatism onto Orthodox soil, especially since, for our Church, the criterion for establishing Eucharistic communion concerns the confession of faith and spiritual substance, rather than mere administrative form—as though our incorporation into a patriarchate engulfed in profound processes of apostasy would ipso facto transform us from ‘schismatics’ into ‘canonical members of the Church.’” (Source)

Meanwhile, in May 2006, the Fourth All-Diaspora Council took place, followed by the Council of Bishops of ROCOR, after which the restoration of Eucharistic communion with the Moscow Patriarchate became inevitable. It is highly revealing that at the Fourth All-Diaspora Council there were not only no representatives of the Romanian and Bulgarian Old Calendarist Churches, but not even [any mention] of them. They seemed to have been completely forgotten… And yet it remained unclear how to proceed with them. After all, one could hardly pretend that “nothing had happened” between 1992 and 2006! But the Synod of ROCOR had no intention of “repenting” of its ties with a “sectarian, schismatic gathering” either. Nor does it intend to do so even now.

Here I once again give the floor to Andrei Alexandrovich Kostryukov:

“Metropolitan Kirill (Gundyaev) proposed a way out. In June 2006, during a meeting with the commissions, he advised the Church Abroad not to announce a break with the Old Calendarist Churches, but to declare a suspension of communion with them until they regularized their relations with the Local Churches in their respective countries. The Synod of Bishops of ROCOR heeded this advice and, on September 6, 2006, adopted a resolution suspending communion with the Bulgarian and Romanian Old Calendarist groups. Thus, one of the last obstacles on the path to unity with the Moscow Patriarchate was removed.” (Kostryukov, A. A. History of the Russian Church Abroad: 1920–2007: A Textbook. Moscow: St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University Press, 2024, p. 419.)

It is particularly noteworthy that neither the Bulgarian nor the Romanian “Old Calendarist groups” were officially notified of this decision. Apparently, it was assumed that everyone read ROCOR’s official website. But, as it turned out, this was not the case: “By its decision of September 6/August 24, 2006, the Synod of ROCOR resolved to terminate ecclesiastical communion with the Bulgarian and Romanian Old Calendarist Orthodox Churches without notifying the Primate of the Bulgarian Old Calendarist Orthodox Church either in writing or orally. Bishop Photii learned of this act of the Synod of ROCOR almost six months later from other sources.” (Source). It is difficult even to say whether this was forgetfulness or deliberate distancing. In either case, however, it reveals an obvious lack of professionalism on the part of ROCOR’s Synodal Chancery.

Here is something else of interest that turned up about the Romanian Old Calendarists. This message was written in English by Archpriest Alexander Lebedev on May 8, 2008, in the private Yahoo group orthodox-tradition:

Perhaps it would be interesting to members of the list to note that the Romanian Old Calendarist Church under Metropolitan Vlasie has a very good relationship and long-standing with the Moscow Patriarchate -- in fact, by mutual agreement, all of the future Romanian Old Calendarist clergy receive their theological education at the Kishinev Seminary in Moldova, which is under the Moscow Patriarchate.

When I was sent by the Synod of Bishops in 2006 to meet with Metropolitan Vlasie, I met quite a number of priests and seminarians, who all had spent, or were spending five years at the Moscow Patriarchate Seminary in Moldavia (where all of the instruction is in Romanian).

During their Seminary years, they all participated fully in the life of the Seminary, receiving Holy Communion there, and, as is usual in Seminaries, in their final year, they were tonsured Reader by a bishop of the Moscow Patriarchate, and then would return to Romania and be ordained by Metropolitan Vlasie or another of his bishops and sent to serve in parishes.

This arrangement has been going on for years.

Metropolitan Kyrill of Smolensk, the Head of the Department of External Relations of the MP, told me that the Moscow Patriarchate thinks quite highly of the Romanian Old Calendarists, and respects them for their dedication to tradition (remember, the MP is staunchly Old Claendar [sic]), and their standing up against the ecumenical excesses of the Romanian Patriarchal Church.

It should also be remembered that the Moscow Patriarchate has extremely strained relations with the Romanian Patriarchal Church for another reason -- the Romanian Church has set up a parallel ecclesiastical structure in Moldova, which the Russian Church considers its canonical territory.  (Source)

It is a pity that the Romanian Old Calendarist Church lost its former sobriety of judgment and slid into Matthewism. Perhaps the reason is that, since opening in 1991, Chișinău Theological Seminary has never been distinguished by a high standard of education… Nevertheless, even after the official break, the two sides continued to correspond…

 

Russian source: https://rocor-observer.livejournal.com/484974.html

 

The Light of Bulgaria: An Orthodox Christian Documentary

 

Bulgaria: Persecution Begins at Home

The Bulgarian Patriarchate pleads for the persecuted church abroad. It petitioned the state to liquidate the Old Calendar Orthodox Church of Bulgaria at home.

July 2, 2026

 

 

Hold two documented facts side by side.

In August 2024, the Patriarch of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church received the ambassador of the United States and drew his attention to the plight of the church in Ukraine — the restrictions on its pastoral work, the "discriminatory policy" to which it is subjected — and urged, in the Patriarchate's own published account of the meeting, that democratic forces around the world help ensure religious freedom in Ukraine and elsewhere. [1]

In late 2025, the courts of Bulgaria ruled with finality that the Old Calendar Orthodox Church of Bulgaria — a community of Orthodox Christians with roots in that country running back to 1968, with its parishes, its monastery of nuns, its cathedral in Sofia — must be stripped of the legal registration it had held for less than a year, under a law enacted for that purpose at the request of the Bulgarian Patriarchate itself. [2]

The distance between those two facts is the subject of this editorial. The word doing the heaviest work in the first of them is elsewhere. This is an investigation into where, precisely, elsewhere ends — and, as always in this journal, every exhibit below is stamped by the institutions themselves: the Patriarchate's own communiqués, the National Assembly's own votes, the courts' own judgments, and the European Court of Human Rights' own findings. The prosecution's exhibits are all stamped by the defendant.

Exhibit A: The voice abroad

No Orthodox primate in the world jurisdictions has spoken more insistently about the persecution of the church in Ukraine than the current Bulgarian Patriarch. The record is extensive and entirely self-published or friendly-sourced.

He has stated publicly that the Ukrainian legislation against the church there imposes "serious factual and legal restrictions" on its pastoral activity and amounts to a "discriminatory policy." [3] In a national television interview marking the first anniversary of his enthronement, he declared that when violence occurs, when churches are seized, and when priests suffer, this cannot be ignored. [4] He raised the matter personally with the American ambassador, asking the world's democratic forces to safeguard religious freedom. [5] He has received, honored, and prayed with a delegation of the most heavily persecuted hierarchs of the Ukrainian church. [6] He has opposed European sanctions against the head of the Russian church. [7] And the Moscow Patriarch, in a published letter of congratulation, thanked him by name for "supporting the persecuted Ukrainian Orthodox Church" and for every word spoken in defense of his suffering brothers. [8]

Set down, then, the working definition of persecution that emerges from the Patriarchate's own advocacy, because we will need it shortly: legal restrictions on a church's activity; discriminatory policy; state interference in the life of a religious community; the use of courts and legislation against believers. These are the Patriarchate's criteria, published under its own letterhead. Remember them.

Exhibit B: The Old Calendar Orthodox Church of Bulgaria

Who, exactly, is the body being erased? Not a foreign import, not a recent invention, and not — as will be seen — a claimant to anyone's property. The Old Calendar Orthodox Church of Bulgaria is the continuation, in unbroken succession, of the Bulgarian faithful who refused the calendar reform of 1968.

In December 1968, the Bulgarian Patriarchate — then under the close management of a communist state — adopted the new calendar. A small circle of clergy and faithful refused: the spiritual children of Archbishop Seraphim (Sobolev), the Russian hierarch who had lived in Sofia for thirty years and whose defense of Orthodoxy against ecumenism had made him, in the words of those who knew him, the conscience of the Church. For their refusal, the dissenting archimandrites were banned from serving and expelled from the Theological Academy; the convent at Knyazhevo had its church expropriated; the Patriarch of that era announced in synod that those who did not accept the reform would be unfrocked or confined to a ruined mountain monastery; and the community passed into a catacomb existence under a regime whose militia watched the convent gates. [9] They ceased commemorating the Bulgarian Patriarch in 1983, received a bishop in 1993 through the Old Calendar hierarchies of Greece and Romania, and applied — that same year — for legal registration in the new, democratic Bulgaria.

The application received no reply. Not a refusal: no reply at all. [10]

By 2013 the Old Calendar Church of Bulgaria numbered some two thousand faithful with twenty-four priests; today it counts parishes across the country, a convent of some sixty nuns, and a cathedral in Sofia. [11] It has never claimed a single church building, bank account, or asset of the Patriarchate; the European Court would later record expressly that it laid no claim to them. [12] It asked for one thing only: legal existence. Without registration, a religious community in Bulgaria cannot own its places of worship, receive donations, or lawfully employ its own clergy. [13] For thirty years, that is what was withheld from the Bulgarian Old Calendarists.

Let this journal's own position be stated without hedging, because it is the position of the whole Patristic-calendar witness of which the Bulgarian church is a part. The Old Calendar Orthodox Church of Bulgaria is not a curiosity, not a sect, and not — whatever the statute now says — a counterfeit. It is the confessing remnant of Bulgarian Orthodoxy: the portion of that church which, when the reform of 1968 was imposed by a synod under a politburo's supervision, did what the confessors of every century have done, and paid what they have always paid. Three generations of the same community have now confessed under three regimes — the catacombs under communism, legal non-existence under democracy, and liquidation under the current synod — and the faith confessed has not varied by a syllable. That is not the profile of a fraud. It is the profile of the thing frauds imitate.

Exhibit C: What the record shows happened at home

Follow the file.

2012. The Sofia City Court refuses to register the Old Calendar Church, reasoning that its name is "identical" to that of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. In those very proceedings, the state's Religious Denominations Directorate declines to submit its own opinion until it has obtained the opinion of the Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. [14] Pause on that: the question of whether the Old Calendarists may legally exist was referred, by an organ of the state, to the very institution from which they had separated. The rival was invited to judge.

2021. The European Court of Human Rights, in Bulgarian Orthodox Old Calendar Church and Others v. Bulgaria, finds a violation of Article 9 of the Convention read in the light of Article 11. Its language is not equivocal: pluralism, "the basic fabric of democracy," is incompatible with state action compelling a religious community to unite under a single leadership; in a democratic society the state has no need to ensure that religious communities remain under one authority; the refusal to register was "not necessary in a democratic society." [15]

December 2024. Executing that judgment, Bulgaria's Supreme Court of Cassation orders the church registered. For a few days, after fifty-six years, the Old Calendar Orthodox Church of Bulgaria legally exists.

The response. The Patriarch personally describes the registration as "uncanonical." The Holy Synod publishes a statement calling the judgment "as unexpected as it is unfortunate, with serious consequences for the future," declaring that "the Orthodox Church can only be one," and demanding that the Old Calendar Church either renounce the name Orthodox or accept that it is "an inseparable part" of the Patriarchate. [16] The Patriarch and members of the Synod then hold meetings with the country's political leadership — in the words of a publication wholly sympathetic to the Patriarchate, seeking state protection, and securing agreement that legislation would prohibit any body but the Patriarchate from bearing the word "Orthodox." [17] After meeting the Patriarch, the leader of the largest parliamentary party announces his support for the Patriarchate as "the sole expression of Orthodoxy in Bulgaria." [18]

January 31, 2025. The National Assembly amends the Religious Denominations Act by a vote of 186 to 1. The Bulgarian Orthodox Church is declared the sole representative of Eastern Orthodoxy in Bulgaria; no other denomination may register under the word "Orthodox" or its derivatives; registered bodies that do not change their names within two months are to be terminated, with liquidation and deletion from the register to follow. [19] The single dissenting deputy states the constitutional objection on the floor: "It is important that we are here as a National Assembly, not as the Holy Synod... the church and the state are separated" — and warns that closed cases with final judgments will be reopened by force of law. [20] A media outlet devoted to the Patriarchate's cause reports the same fact as a triumph: this is "the first case in Bulgarian legislation where reference to Church canonical law would be explicitly included in a legal text with binding force." [21]

2025. The Sofia City Prosecution Office and the Religious Denominations Directorate move to terminate the Old Calendar Church's registration and open liquidation proceedings. When the Sofia City Court initially refuses — holding that the amendments conflict with the European Convention — the prosecution appeals. [22] In the autumn, the courts characterize the Old Calendarists as outside the law; by December, the ruling is final: the Old Calendar Orthodox Church of Bulgaria is to be deregistered. [23]

Fifty-six years without legal existence. Eleven months with it.

Now apply the Patriarchate's own definition

Return to the criteria the Patriarchate published in its advocacy for the church in Ukraine, and run the checklist against the file above.

Legal restrictions on a church's pastoral activity? For three decades the Old Calendar Church of Bulgaria could not own its churches, receive donations, or employ its clergy — a condition the European Court examined and condemned. [24]

Discriminatory policy? The Old Calendarists argued before the European Court that Bulgarian courts refused registration only to communities resembling the Patriarchate while freely registering multiple Evangelical and Baptist churches of a single confession; the Court found the underlying refusal unjustified in a democratic society. [25]

State interference in the life of a religious community? A statute now in force names one church the sole lawful bearer of the word "Orthodox," writes canonical claims into binding civil law for the first time in the country's legislative history, and prescribes liquidation for the Old Calendar Church if it will not surrender its name.

Courts and legislation used against believers? A final judgment of a national supreme court, issued in execution of a European human-rights ruling, was overturned within weeks by an act of parliament passed 186 to 1 — precisely the reopening of closed cases by force of law that the lone dissenting deputy warned against.

Every criterion the Patriarchate applies to Kyiv is met, item for item, in Sofia — and the body it is met against is the Old Calendar Orthodox Church of Bulgaria. There is exactly one difference, and it is not a difference of kind. In Ukraine, the state moved against a church over the objection of the local patriarchate's sympathizers. In Bulgaria, the state moved against the Old Calendar Church at the request of the local patriarchate — after its primate called that church's legal existence "uncanonical," after its synod sought what its own friendly press called state protection, and after its meetings with party leaders produced the very bill. The Patriarchate of Bulgaria is not a bystander to the checklist. It is the petitioner.

And so the sentence delivered to the American ambassador completes itself. Religious freedom must be ensured in Ukraine and elsewhere — and elsewhere, on the evidence of the file, extends to every jurisdiction on earth except the streets around the Synod's own palace.

The saint in the middle of it

There is one more exhibit, and it is the most uncomfortable of all, because the Patriarchate itself placed it in the record.

In 2016, Archbishop Seraphim (Sobolev) — the hierarch whose spiritual children founded the Bulgarian Old Calendar movement, the man who taught them that ecumenism was a betrayal of Orthodoxy and whose counsel they invoked when they refused the reform of 1968 — was glorified as a saint, with the participation and celebration of the Bulgarian Patriarchate, which venerates his relics in Sofia to this day and marked the tenth anniversary of his canonization with a solemn liturgy. [26]

Sit with the arithmetic of that. The father is on the calendar of saints. The children are on the liquidation docket. The same institution that censes the relics of St. Seraphim of Sofia petitioned the state to dissolve the Old Calendar Orthodox Church of Bulgaria — the church that did what he taught. If the saint was right — and the Patriarchate's own act of glorification declares that he was — then the church formed in his obedience is not a fraud upon Orthodoxy but its remnant. And if that church is, as the Synod's statement insists, no church at all, then what, precisely, was canonized in 2016?

This journal does not leave its own answer in doubt. What was glorified in 2016 was the father of the Bulgarian confessors; what stands before the liquidator in 2025 is his church — the one body in Bulgaria that received his teaching whole and kept it at cost. The Patriarchate cannot have the saint and the statute. It has chosen to keep both, and the incoherence is now enshrined in Bulgarian law. The Old Calendarists, for their part, have no incoherence to manage: they venerate the same saint the Patriarchate venerates, and unlike the Patriarchate, they obeyed him.

What this journal is not saying

Let the record be precise about what is not claimed here. This editorial does not adjudicate the situation in Ukraine, does not defend any state's measures against any believer anywhere, and does not require the reader to take a side in that conflict. It stipulates, for the sake of argument, everything the Bulgarian Patriarchate says about the suffering of the church there — every word of it. The argument does not depend on doubting the Patriarchate's advocacy. It depends on believing it.

Because if legal restriction, discrimination, state interference, and legislative targeting constitute persecution when they fall upon two hundred monasteries in Ukraine, then they constitute persecution when they fall upon one convent of sixty nuns in Bulgaria. The number of the persecuted does not alter the nature of the act. A synod that can identify the pattern flawlessly at a thousand kilometers' distance, and then reproduce the pattern at home down to the statutory mechanics — courts, registries, liquidation procedures — has not failed to understand what persecution is. It has demonstrated that it understands perfectly.

This journal has documented elsewhere how the Bulgarian Synod, alone with Georgia, drew the honest conclusion from its own confession and left the World Council of Churches — and how it refused Crete. [27] Credit was given where due, and it stands. But the same synod's conduct in this file discloses what that traditionalism is prepared to do when the Patristic-calendar witness appears not in a rival patriarchate's territory but in its own: it reaches for the state. The confessors of 1968 were handed to the militia by a patriarchate that answered to a politburo. Their successors have been handed to the liquidator by a patriarchate that answered to no one but itself — and that, in the same twelve months, asked the ambassadors of the world to weep with it over churches seized by governments.

When violence occurs, when churches are seized, and when priests suffer — this cannot be ignored. The sentence is true. The Patriarchate said it. The only question this editorial leaves with the reader is the one the file forces: whether the sentence was a confession of faith, or a description of policy — and whether elsewhere was ever meant to include the Old Calendar Orthodox Church of Bulgaria, the people who kept the calendar the saints kept, in the country where their saint now lies enshrined.

What a court cannot deregister

One word remains, and it belongs to the Old Calendarists rather than to their prosecutors.

A court can strike a name from a register. It struck this one after eleven months, and the men who drafted the statute may count that a victory. But the Old Calendar Orthodox Church of Bulgaria was not created by registration and cannot be dissolved by its removal. She existed for fifty-six years without the state's permission — through the militia at the convent gates, through the decades when her application sat unanswered in a drawer, through every refusal the European Court would later condemn — and her liturgies did not pause for any of it. The nuns of that convent will rise for the midnight office on the day the liquidation order is stamped, as they rose the day before it, on the calendar of the saints, in the obedience of their saint. What the National Assembly voted 186 to 1 to protect was a name in a civil register. What it could not reach by any vote is the thing the name pointed to.

The confessors of 1968 were promised unfrocking and a ruined monastery in the mountains. They took the mountains. Their heirs are promised liquidation. The record of this file suggests they have already shown, across three regimes and fifty-eight years, exactly what they will do with a promise like that — and the record of the Church suggests that this, and not the statute, is what Bulgaria will one day keep.

✦

Notes

1. Communiqué of the Bulgarian Patriarchate on the meeting between the Bulgarian Patriarch and the U.S. Ambassador to Bulgaria, August 2024; reported in "Bulgarian Patriarch informs U.S. ambassador about persecution of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church," OrthoChristian, August 2024.

2. "Съдът реши окончателно: 'Българска православна старостилна църква' трябва да бъде дерегистрирана" [The court rules with finality: the "Bulgarian Orthodox Old Calendar Church" must be deregistered], Glasove, December 2025; cf. "Βουλγαρία: Δικαστήριο χαρακτηρίζει έκνομους τους Βούλγαρους Παλαιοημερολογίτες" [Bulgaria: Court characterizes the Bulgarian Old Calendarists as outside the law], Balkan Periscope, 10 October 2025.

3. Statements of the Bulgarian Patriarch on Ukraine's Law 8371, August 2024; see Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, "Pro-War Policies Put Russia's Orthodox Church Under Increasing Pressure Outside Russia," 30 August 2024, quoting the characterizations "serious factual and legal restrictions" and "discriminatory policy."

4. Interview of the Bulgarian Patriarch with Bulgarian National Television on the first anniversary of his enthronement, mid-2025; reported by Orthodox Times and RISU, July 2025.

5. See n. 1.

6. "Persecuted Metropolitan Longin visits staunch Bulgarian Patriarch Daniil," OrthoChristian, February 2026, describing the visit of a delegation of hierarchs of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

7. Remarks of the Bulgarian Patriarch following the session of the Holy Synod, June 2026; Orthodox Times, "Bulgarian Patriarch defends opposition to sanctions on Russian Patriarch Kirill."

8. Letter of congratulation of the Moscow Patriarch to the Bulgarian Patriarch on the anniversary of his ministry, 2025; quoted in RISU, "Bulgarian Patriarch voices Russian narratives while commenting on events in Ukraine," July 2025.

9. On the events of 1968–1990: "Bishop Photios of Triaditsa and the Old Calendarist Church of Bulgaria," Orthodox America (archival); the community's own historical account; and the factual recitation in the European Court's judgment cited at n. 15, §§ 4–5.

10. Bulgarian Orthodox Old Calendar Church and Others v. Bulgaria, no. 56751/13, ECtHR, 20 April 2021, § 6 (application of 1993 "remained without a formal reply").

11. Ibid., § 7 (twenty-four priests, about two thousand adherents by 2013); on the present count of parishes, the convent, and the Sofia cathedral, see the community's own published directories and contemporaneous Bulgarian reporting, 2024–2025.

12. Ibid., §§ 14–15 and the Court's summary of the applicants' submissions on paragraph 3 of the 2002 Act's transitional provisions.

13. Ibid., § 7 and the Court's account of the consequences of non-registration.

14. Ibid., §§ 10–11: the Religious Denominations Directorate advised the court that it would file its comments only after obtaining the opinion of the Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church.

15. Ibid., §§ 62–64: "Pluralism, which is the basic fabric of democracy, is incompatible with State action compelling a religious community to unite under a single leadership"; the refusal was "not 'necessary in a democratic society'"; breach of Article 9 read in the light of Article 11.

16. Statement of the Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church – Bulgarian Patriarchate, late December 2024; reported by the Bulgarian Telegraph Agency, "Bulgarian Orthodox Church Slams Supreme Court Judgment on Old Calendar Orthodox Church Registration," 30 December 2024, including the Patriarch's prior public characterization of the registration as "uncanonical."

17. "Bulgarian Parliament moves to protect Patriarchate's legal status against registration of schismatics," OrthoChristian, January 2025: the Patriarch "and members of the Holy Synod met with various institutions seeking state protection against a potential new schism, agreeing on the need to prohibit the use of the word 'Orthodox' as a designation for any church in Bulgaria other than the Patriarchate."

18. Contemporaneous Bulgarian reporting on the meeting between the Patriarch and the leader of GERB, December 2024 ("the sole expression of Orthodoxy in Bulgaria"); see also the Wikipedia digest of party positions with underlying Bulgarian sources.

19. Law on Amendments and Supplements to the Religious Denominations Act, adopted 31 January 2025, in force 4 February 2025; The Sofia Globe, "National Assembly legislates that Bulgarian Orthodox Church is country's sole representative of Eastern Orthodoxy," 31 January 2025 (vote of 186–1); OrthoChristian, "Only Bulgarian Patriarchate can use 'Orthodox' in its name," February 2025 (two-month renaming deadline; termination and liquidation procedure).

20. Remarks of the deputy from We Continue the Change – Democratic Bulgaria on the floor of the National Assembly, 31 January 2025; The Sofia Globe, ibid.

21. OrthoChristian, "Bulgarian Parliament moves to protect Patriarchate's legal status against registration of schismatics," January 2025.

22. Bulgarian Telegraph Agency, "Prosecutors Appeal Court's Refusal to Cancel Registration of Old Calendar Orthodox Church of Bulgaria," July 2025, including the motions of the Sofia City Prosecution Office and the Religious Denominations Directorate to terminate the registration and initiate liquidation.

23. See n. 2.

24. See nn. 10, 13, 15.

25. Bulgarian Orthodox Old Calendar Church and Others v. Bulgaria, §§ 65–66 (the Article 14 complaint) and §§ 62–64 (the Court's holding on Article 9).

26. On the glorification of St. Seraphim (Sobolev) of Boguchar, February 2016, and the Bulgarian Patriarchate's celebration of its tenth anniversary at the church housing his relics in Sofia, see OrthoChristian, "10th anniversary of canonization of St. Seraphim (Sobolev), link between Russian and Bulgarian Churches," February 2026.

27. "But We Don't," Patristic Witness (2026), n. 1 and the discussion of the withdrawals of Georgia (1997) and Bulgaria (1998) from the World Council of Churches.

 

Source: https://patristicwitness.com/ArticleDetail?id=6a4778978db63aa061b0f4d1

 

 

 

Sermon on the Ascension of our Lord (2007)

Bishop [Metropolitan] Photii of Triaditza | May 4/17, 2007

 

The God-Man Christ, beloved faithful, came from the Truth, brought to us as a gift the Truth and returned to the Truth, raising up human nature, on the fortieth day after His Resurrection, to the very Throne of the Holy Consubstantial, Life-giving and Indivisible Trinity. The Saviour came not only to show us the path toward the Truth. He came, being Himself the Truth and the Way towards Her. Christ the Lord levelled the walls between the earthly humans and the celestial Truth. Ay, if we do not rise above the dust of the earth, if we do not rally courage enough to rise above our own nonentity, above our voluptuous desires for earthly things, we will be unable to walk on the path toward the Truth, we will be unable to be children of the Truth, we will be unable to live with the Truth and in the Truth. And the path, leading towards the Truth, leads all the way upwards and never downwards, just as Christ’s path led towards Golgotha. And our very first step of rising from the earth toward heaven, our very first breaking off from the earthly bounds, is our ascending on the cross, as Christ Himself was raised from the earth on the Cross, in order that He draw every man toward Himself: toward the Truth, toward the Way and toward Life. The path from the cross to heaven, to immortal life, is indeed sometimes of extensive duration and a long distance, very long, and sometimes it may be traversed in but an instant, as happened to many of the holy New Martyrs of Batak, [1] whose memory we celebrate today, together with Christ’s glorious Ascension. Everywhere there was blood, shrieks and horror…, some of the Martyrs bravely threw themselves into the embrace of Truth, others did this timidly and with resignation, or—in a swoon of terror—let themselves fall into the same embrace, not renouncing their Faith in order to be spared from death, but in an instant, passing under the blade of the axe or the yataghan, they became participants in the fullness of Truth and Life!

However, there is hardly anything half so grievous as one who, having once torn himself away from the earth and ascended his cross, has afterwards become frightened by the way of the Cross and the Resurrection, or has been hoaxed by the earthly desire to feel again the earthy dust under his feet. And lo! Today [2] the Hierarchical Assembly of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad descends from the cross of their Orthodox witness. Today, by serving the Liturgy together, the mark is set for the Church Abroad to be grafted into the organism of the Moscow Patriarchate. Lo, today the chief priests seal their descent from their cross by exchanging the liturgical kiss with those who were calling them to descend from the cross as they themselves had done in the past. How painful is the lie, which in our days calls the descent ascent, and the fall rising! While the Hierarchs of the Church Abroad were raised from the earth on the cross of witnessing for Orthodoxy, they were called schismatics; when they descended from the cross, when they delivered to Caesar—be he even so an ecclesiastical Caesar—what belongs to God, they immediately rose in his eyes and became his brethren. Indeed, is there anything more disheartening than to see how a lie bedecks itself with the garments of Truth? Indeed, those who descended from the cross pronounce, and will continue to pronounce, many words of fidelity to the Church and Orthodoxy—words glorifying the exploit of the martyrs and confessors; but is it really not a descent to wreathe verbal praises for the spiritual heroes, having yourself fled in disgrace from the battlefield? Is it not immoral—having yourself abandoned your witnessing of the Truth for the sake of earthy benefits and gains—to glorify the persons, who held the love of Truth higher than their own lives? And yet, Caesar will not celebrate his victory for long. He shall not be jubilant for long, because what is God’s has been delivered to him by the hands of bishops, with the sole purpose of acquiring his condescension. For God is never mocked!

 And because the God-Man after His ascension abides with us—with all who, even though weak, aspire to tread along the path leading upward and only upward: to Golgotha and the Cross, and thence toward the heavenly homeland, from whence over us pour down the streams of the love of the New Martyrs of Batak, of the Holy New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, of all the citizens of Heaven, who walked their earthly path in the never-setting light of the Way, the Truth and Life! Amen.

 

Footnotes:

1. The Holy Martyrs of Batak - Bulgarian Martyrs from the village of Batak who were slain by Turkish forces in 1876, in an assault on the Christians which lasted from the 1st to the 4th May (Old Calendar). Their feast day is observed on 4th / 17th May, which in 2007 was also the Great Feast of the Ascension.

2. It was on that very same feast day in 2007, - and it is for this reason that Bishop Photii contrasts the Martyrs of Batak with the betrayers of the Church Abroad, - that the “Act of Canonical Communion” between the Moscow Patriarchate and the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia was signed in Moscow, thus changing the historical course of the latter and bringing her into full communion with “World Orthodoxy,” its Sergianist heritage and its ecumenical activities. However, through God’s mercies, one hierarch, Bishop Agafangel, and numbers of the clergy and laity throughout the world did not accept this “descent from the Cross.” Some joined themselves to other Traditionalist Synods, and many formed a continuing Church Abroad under the omophorion of Bishop Agafangel. The traditionalist Synod now comprises twelve Bishops, and has monasteries and parishes throughout the world. The Synod which united with the Moscow Patriarchate also has twelve Bishops (with a thirteenth in retirement) and lives semi-autonomously as part of the Moscow Patriarchate, though its exact purpose is unclear: many decisions are purportedly referred to the Patriarch himself, the churches directly under the Patriarchal administration even abroad seem to have a stronger presence, and, even eight years after the union, duplications of dioceses and administrations are still in evidence. So, one is left wondering: To what purpose this apparent duplication of administrations?

 

Source: The Shepherd: An Orthodox Christian Pastoral Magazine, May 2015, pp. 7-9.

What We Know About Archbishop Seraphim (Sobolev)

Nun [now Abbess] Seraphima (Dimitrova) [1]

 

 

On the occasion of the interview posted on the official website of the Bulgarian Patriarchate with Mr. Andrei Alexandrovich Kostryukov, “What We Do Not Know about Archbishop Seraphim (Sobolev)”

 

Ten years ago, precisely on the day of the 120th anniversary of the birth of St. Seraphim, Archbishop of Boguchar, Wonderworker of Sofia, a letter was sent, on behalf of the ever-memorable Abbess Seraphima and the sisterhood of the convent “Protection of the Most Holy Theotokos,” to the primate of the Old Calendar Orthodox Church of Bulgaria with a request that the glorification of Archbishop Seraphim be prepared and carried out, he being the spiritual father and ideological inspirer of our church community. By the mercy of God, less than three months later, on February 25 (February 12 O.S.), 2002—on the eve of the 52nd anniversary of the saint’s righteous repose—His Grace Bishop Photius performed his glorification in the cathedral church of the Dormition of the Theotokos, where we are now gathered.

Even then, the event provoked various comments and agitation in the circles of the official church—a reaction caused not by the existence of contradictions in the personality and activity of the saint, but by the specific disposition and way of thinking of a part of today’s church figures. During this period, the article “The Theft of Saints” [2] also appeared in the official newspaper of the Bulgarian Patriarchate, Church Herald. This was yet another example of an ecclesiastical-political approach to the memory of the saint. It expressed the strange claim that St. Seraphim should be taken away from the “thieves” who had canonized him (that is, from us) and “appropriated” by the official church, but not in order that his precepts might be assimilated and preached—which would be a joy for all of us—but so that they might be mixed with aims alien to those precepts. Truly, a tragic claim, torn by inner contradictions.

Not long ago, on December 1 (N.S.) [, 2011], the 130th anniversary of his birth was commemorated in the Russian church of St. Nicholas, where the relics of St. Seraphim of Sofia repose. In connection with this, the book A Biography of Archbishop Seraphim Sobolev, published by the Synodal Publishing House in Russian and Bulgarian, was presented. Its author is Andrei Alexandrovich Kostryukov, a researcher in the Department for the Study of the Most Recent History of the Russian Orthodox Church and an associate professor in the Department of the History of the Russian Church at St. Tikhon’s Humanitarian University. In his own words, his aim was to examine in a many-sided way the personality and works of the saint, and thereby to assist in an overall assessment of his contribution to the Russian and Bulgarian Churches. Mr. Kostryukov has evidently expended no little labor, working with documents from Russian state and church archives that until recently were inaccessible to researchers. In this respect, his book, along with his other publications devoted to the recent history of the Russian Church and specifically to Archbishop Seraphim (Sobolev), brings to light valuable archival information, for which we owe him gratitude. However, we should not pass over in silence another aspect that casts a shadow over these works: their evident church-political orientation and the manipulativeness that at places shows through beneath their outwardly objective tone, by which they suggest certain views and attitudes to the reader. For the sake of the impartial and well-intentioned reader who will open this newly published book out of a desire to learn something new about St. Seraphim, we consider it our duty to point out some of the more significant tendentious elements in Mr. Kostryukov’s publications relating to the life and views of St. Seraphim. In this regard, we were also aided by the interview with the author published on the official website of the Bulgarian Patriarchate. In it, the aforementioned points are expressed in an extremely concise and vivid manner, which makes their critical analysis easier.

I shall permit myself to cite several excerpts from the interview. Mr. Kostryukov says:

“...a true testimony to his [Archbishop Seraphim’s] holiness is his works of a spiritual character, which are deeply Orthodox and imbued with God-inspired wisdom: his writings against modernism, his works against abnormal rapprochement with the non-Orthodox, and others. He was always in favor of dialogue with the heterodox, associated with them, and was even convinced of the necessity of creating a united Christian front against atheism. In 1948, at the Pan-Orthodox Conference, he placed his signature on the final documents alongside representatives of the Armenian community. He had nothing against associating with the heterodox; he understood that there are certain reflections of the truth in their teachings and beliefs, but nevertheless he maintained that the Truth is only in Orthodoxy, that dialogue may be conducted, but compromises with holy Orthodoxy may not be made… A little-known report by Bishop Seraphim on the Anglican hierarchy makes it clear that he was ready for dialogue, ready to agree to certain ritual differences, provided that the Anglicans return to the Orthodox confession and to Orthodoxy…” (emphasis mine — M.S.)

The manipulative character of what is said is oppressive. After Mr. Kostryukov evaluates Archbishop Seraphim’s works against modernism as a true testimony to his holiness, as spiritual, deeply Orthodox, and imbued with God-inspired wisdom, he seems to hasten to suggest that the saint nevertheless had nothing against “normal” rapprochement with the non-Orthodox. In support of this, Mr. Kostryukov adduces “proofs,” attributing to the saint specific actions, namely: 1) a desire for the creation of a united Christian front against atheism; 2) the signing of the final documents of the Moscow Conference in 1948 jointly with representatives of the Armenian community; 3) a readiness to conduct dialogue with the Anglicans and to make certain compromises regarding them.

A similar manipulative device is also employed by Mr. Kostryukov in his article “The Final Years of the Earthly Ministry of Archbishop Seraphim (Sobolev),” posted on the website Sedmitsa.Ru of the Church-Scientific Center “Orthodox Encyclopedia” on November 30 (N.S.)—on the very eve of the celebration held at the Russian metochion.

“[At the Moscow Conference in 1948],” Mr. Kostryukov writes there, “the archpastor delivered three reports: on the Anglican hierarchy, on ecumenism, and on the new calendar style. Being an opponent of compromises in the sphere of dogmatic questions (which is reflected in his report ‘Should the Russian Orthodox Church Participate in the Ecumenical Movement?’), the archpastor nevertheless did not reject theological dialogue. This is confirmed in his report ‘On the Anglican Hierarchy.’ At the same time, he considered cooperation with heterodox Christians to be permissible. For example, in the face of the threat of the communist God-fighting spirit that was menacing the world, Archbishop Seraphim called for the creation of a pan-Christian front for the struggle against atheism.”

As we see, the same assertions are repeated here as well. Let us now examine, step by step, their reliability in the light of what we know about the saint, pausing more carefully also over the primary sources cited by Mr. Kostryukov.

I. Concerning the “United Christian front”

1. Is the claim true that during the First Russian All-Diasproa Council in 1921 St. Seraphim called for the creation of a united Christian front against atheism?

As proof of this, Mr. Kostryukov points to p. 45 of the Acts of the Russian All-Diaspora Council, held from November 8 to 21, 1921 (November 21–December 3, New Style) in Sremski Karlovci, published in Serbia in 1922.

1.1. On the cited page is printed Protocol No. 6, which describes a session of the Missionary Department held on November 29 (November 16 O.S.), 1921. We shall recall that His Grace Seraphim, Bishop of Lubny—such was the title borne by the saint in those years—had been appointed by the Council’s Episcopal Council as chairman of the Missionary Department. His deputy chairman was the well-known Russian missionary Vasily Mikhailovich Skvortsov. [3] We cite the text of the Protocol without abbreviations (all emphasis mine — M.S.):

“The assembly proceeds to the consideration of the report of the Missionary Department. The reporter, V. M. Skvortsov, presents the Department’s resolution defining the tasks of the Orthodox mission abroad, namely: the strengthening of the faithful children of the Church in the dogmas of the faith and in the principles of Christian morality and piety; the safeguarding of Russian people from the corrupting influence of sectarian, heterodox, anti-Christian, and God-fighting currents of social thought, disseminated through the press and by means of Masonic organizations; the bringing to reason of those who have gone astray and the revealing before the spiritual gaze of people abroad of the light of Orthodoxy, the purity and truth of its dogmas, and the majestic beauty of its rites. Further, the reporter dwells in detail on the conditions of the missionary service abroad of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad and on the dangers threatening the orthodoxy of her children. The greatest danger is represented by the spread of Baptism and Adventism, which in all the capitals and in many of the cities have their own centers, possessing enormous literature in all languages and financial means. The latter sect is dangerous not so much by the number of those falling away [from Orthodoxy] into it, as by its ideas, which corrupt faith in the coming of Christ the Savior and in the life beyond the grave. By its rites (the observance of Saturday), the sect constitutes a bridge from Christianity to the Old Testament. Great danger is also represented by the propaganda of anti-Christian and God-fighting teachings, such as theosophy, occultism, and especially materialistic socialism in the form of Bolshevism and communism. Anti-Christian teachings are introduced into life not only through ideas and through the press, but also under the flag of charitable, openly Masonic institutions, such as the Christian Youth Union [YMCA] and the Mayak society. No less a danger is represented by the propaganda of militant Roman Catholicism, which is carried on systematically and, in many forms, chiefly among influential Russian circles and the minor children of the refugees. Catholic propaganda has flung wide the doors of various schools and boarding schools for Russian children, where they are brought up in the spirit of Catholicism. The reporter also touches upon the striving of Roman Catholic propaganda to introduce union in Ukraine.

His Eminence Seraphim reports to the Assembly on the different viewpoints that individual members of the Department had expressed on the question of socialism in its various branches. Bishop Seraphim says that socialism in its root and in all its varieties must be condemned as contrary to Christianity.

After the Assembly discusses the report (printed in the Appendix), it is adopted with the exception of the appeal to the heterodox churches for the creation of a united spiritual front for the struggle against socialism in all its varieties.

The Assembly unanimously resolves that a separate commission be formed to compose an appeal in which the teaching of socialism is to be condemned. Its members are His Eminence Benjamin, Archpriest M. Stelmashenko, and T. V. Lokot.” [4] Thus Protocol No. 6 concludes (all emphasis mine — M.S.).

1.2. In order conscientiously to understand the actions described in the Protocol, it is necessary for us also to become acquainted with the procedure for discussing and deciding questions. It is described in the Council’s Regulations. [5] We shall briefly present points from them to assist our investigation.

For better effectiveness in resolving the diverse questions facing the First Council of the Russian church emigration, eight departments were formed in it [6] (point 17 of the Regulations). They were staffed by participants in the Council who possessed suitable qualifications and expressed a desire to take part in their work (point 18). As chairman of each department, the Episcopal Conference (Episkopskoe Soveshchanie) appointed one of the bishops participating in the Council (point 20)—they were fourteen in number. The members of the respective department themselves elected its deputy chairman and secretary. The first phase of discussions took place within the department. After discussing the reports of their members, the departments submitted for consideration in the General Assembly the result of their work. The report prepared for this purpose is called in the Regulations a draft resolution, but in the protocols the very word “report” is also not infrequently used. The draft resolutions were handed over to the Council of the Assembly [21] (point 21)—the body that directed the work of the General Assembly. When the draft resolution of a given department was being considered, the chairman of that department also took part in the Council of the General Assembly, and in that case his vote was decisive (point 15). The Council presented the submitted draft resolutions to the General Assembly without any changes whatsoever, but in case of necessity it had the right to propose its own parallel redaction (point 25). The draft resolution was reported to the Assembly by the chairman of the department or by another of its members according to a decision previously taken in the department (point 27). After the general discussion of the draft resolution, it was put to a vote by the Assembly, and then also by the Episcopal Conference, without whose approval it could not be adopted (points 46 and 47). All documents adopted by the Council are published in the section “Epistles, Resolutions, Reports” of the Acts. The approved resolutions of the various departments are placed there under the title “reports.”

1.3. Having before us both the text of the Protocol and the rules governing the work of the Council, we can now draw the conclusions to which these documents lead.

1.3.1. In the Protocol from the Acts there is mention of a “spiritual front for the struggle against socialism,” whereas Mr. Kostryukov speaks of a “front against atheism.” The discrepancy may not be accidental—in today’s post-communist society, given the presence of a smoldering nostalgia for the “benefits” of the totalitarian system, the idea of a “spiritual front against socialism” would hardly please everyone. A conformist approach in historical scholarship, however, inevitably leads to falsehoods. At the Council in 1921, St. Seraphim spoke precisely against the ideology of socialism, which he viewed not as a political or economic system, but first and foremost as a worldview diametrically opposed to the Christian one.

1.3.2. Mr. Kostryukov’s claim that it was precisely St. Seraphim who put forward the idea of “an appeal to the heterodox churches for the creation of a united spiritual front for the struggle against socialism” finds no basis in the Protocol. It says that “the appeal...” was omitted from the “report (printed in the Appendix),” that is, from the draft resolution that had been prepared in the Department with the participation of all its members. Thus, any one of them could have been its initiator.

1.3.3. As for St. Seraphim’s participation in the discussions, the Protocol speaks of it only in two phrases, set in a separate paragraph: “His Eminence Seraphim reports to the Assembly on the different viewpoints that individual members of the Department had expressed on the question of socialism in its various branches. Bishop Seraphim says that socialism in its root and in all its varieties must be condemned as contrary to Christianity.” In these words, there is not a single mention that Bishop Seraphim raised the question of creating a “pan-Christian front” against socialism. There is mention only of the necessity that socialism in all its varieties be condemned by the forum. “The Assembly unanimously resolves that a separate commission be formed to compose an appeal in which the teaching of socialism is to be condemned.” But St. Seraphim was not included in this commission, and from the results of its work interesting conclusions may be drawn, which we shall present below.

From all that has been said thus far, it is clear that the claim for which Mr. Kostryukov cites Protocol No. 6 of the Acts of the First Russian Church Diaspora Council as its basis is unfounded.

1.3.4. As we have seen, Protocol No. 6 of the 1921 Council describes St. Seraphim’s participation in its work very laconically, but in the memory of the saint’s spiritual children some details of this have been preserved. It is known, for example, that he energetically opposed the proposals for cooperation with the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) [8]—an organization of Protestant origin which at that time was carrying on extensive activity among Russian émigrés. He drew attention not only to its financial and political dependence on Masonry, but also to its “supra-confessional” ideology, alien to Orthodoxy. The saint insisted that its activity be condemned in the report of the Missionary Department on a par with that of the sects. There were opponents of his position among the participants in the Council, because the organization provided the émigrés with considerable material assistance. Nevertheless, the critical assessment of the YMCA’s activity was incorporated into the report. St. Seraphim was not afraid openly to denounce Masonry either, which at that time was one of the principal driving forces behind the processes of decomposition among the Orthodox. Yet an official condemnation of this powerful structure of anti-Christian orientation was pronounced by the Russian Council of Bishops Abroad only ten years later—in 1932. It is known that St. Seraphim was one of the active champions of this undertaking.

1.3.5. It is noteworthy that nowhere in Protocol No. 6 is it mentioned precisely what kind of socialism St. Seraphim insisted should be condemned. This silence is inexplicable unless it is taken as deliberate. The truth is that, alongside openly materialistic socialism, whose forms are Bolshevism, or communism, St. Seraphim insisted that so-called “Christian socialism” also be condemned as especially dangerous and misleading to believers. “Christian” socialism had quite a few supporters chiefly among the modernistically inclined section of Russian theologians, and in the last decades before the Bolshevik revolution it had also been successfully propagated among Russian peasants by suggesting some supposed similarity between its ideals and those of Christianity. At the Council too there were supporters of the “Christian” variant of socialism. It may be supposed that, in order to avoid further grounds for division (and there were already enough such grounds among the Russian emigration at that time), the disputes on this subject were not reflected in the Acts and the question was in practice removed from consideration. St. Seraphim’s insistent request that socialism in all its forms be condemned was formally satisfied—a separate three-member commission was appointed, consisting of Bishop Benjamin (Fedchenkov), Archpriest M. Stelmashenko, and T. V. Lokot. But in the document they prepared under the title “Basic Theses for the Exposure of the False Teaching of Socialism,” the condemnation concerns only “the false teaching of socialism and its most consistent form—Bolshevism, or communism.” It says not a word about “Christian” socialism, the exposure of which St. Seraphim regarded as especially important. It is interesting, however, that in these theses, in the section “Measures against the socialist false teaching,” there is the following point: “c) participation in the struggle against socialism by all Christian confessions and by the other religions.” It turns out that the idea of a pan-Christian, and even pan-religious, front for the struggle against socialism [9] did find, albeit modestly, a place in the Council’s documents, which means that it had quite enough supporters there, including the aforementioned compilers of the theses. This once again confirms that Mr. Kostryukov’s attempts to attribute this idea exclusively to St. Seraphim are unfounded and tendentious.

1.4. In 1933, St. Seraphim sent in succession two letters to the Synod Abroad, protesting the synodal permission granted to Archbishop Nestor of Kamchatka for his participation in the Far Eastern conference for the struggle against atheism. Orthodox, Catholics, Lutherans, Mohammedans, Judaists, and even pagans were to take part in it, and joint prayers among them were also envisaged. After St. Seraphim failed to achieve the desired result through his letters to the Synod, on August 30, 1934, he raised the question personally during a plenary session of the Council of Bishops Abroad. This time, the members of the Council unanimously agreed that Bishop Seraphim’s protest was well founded, and they withdrew the resolution permitting participation in the conference. The saint’s firm position proceeded both from his principled rejection of the ever more fully manifesting ecumenical ideology and from his direct observations that the participation of Orthodox in ecumenical conferences and all sorts of “supra-confessional” formations leads only to the blurring of their church consciousness, to coldness and indifference toward the faith.

St. Seraphim’s struggle against the participation of the Russian Church Abroad in the ecumenical movement in all its manifestations continued also at the Second Russian All-Diaspora Council in 1938. In an address before the Council, [10] he set forth with particular clarity the grounds for his rejection of ecumenical ideology. As the basis of his arguments, St. Seraphim placed the fundamental truth that outside the Orthodox Church there is no salvation. The more historical time advances, he emphasized before the Council, the more people become divided and depart from the only saving path of Orthodoxy. True unification, which is unification in the Truth, can take place only on the basis of grace-filled life—that is to say, only in the bosom of the Orthodox Church. For Orthodox truth is revealed through the grace of the Holy Spirit—that is, precisely through that of which the ecumenical movement has no conception and does not wish to have any conception. For this reason, true union by way of the ecumenical movement is unattainable, and the means employed by the movement are inadmissible from an Orthodox point of view. The extra-ecclesial union proposed by the ecumenists will bring only harm, and this harm cannot be redeemed by the unproven benefit of the supposed missionary activity of Orthodox ecumenists among the heterodox. Consequently, every kind of association with the ecumenical movement must be rejected on principle, and no representatives whatsoever should be sent to its conferences. Such were the principal points in the address of St. Seraphim, which he concluded with the significant words of the Psalmist: “Blessed is that man who does not go into the assembly of the ungodly!” (Ps. 1:1).

The saint continued his work of exposing ecumenism as an ideology contrary to Orthodoxy with particular firmness at the Moscow Conference in 1948, where by the report he delivered there, he became the ideological inspirer of the entire subsequent generation of Orthodox traditionalists. It would not be an exaggeration to say that by his life and word St. Seraphim was the most consistent and principled exposer of the ecumenical heresy among the hierarchs of the Russian Church Abroad in the first half of the twentieth century.

II. Concerning the non-existent signing of documents jointly with representatives of the Armenian community

Is Mr. Andrei Kostryukov’s claim true that in 1948, at the Pan-Orthodox Conference in Moscow, St. Seraphim “placed his signature on the final documents alongside representatives of the Armenian community”?

In the Acts of the Conference of the Heads and Representatives of the Autocephalous Orthodox Churches, held in Moscow from July 8 to 18, 1948 (vol. 2, pp. 424–425), it is described in detail exactly which participants in the Conference had the right to sign its final documents. These were the primates of the local churches (9 persons) and the Exarch of the Moscow Patriarchate in Czechoslovakia—in all, 10 signatures of specifically named high-ranking clergymen. The name of Archbishop Seraphim (Sobolev), who headed the Orthodox Russian communities in Bulgaria, does not appear in this list. At the ratification of the final documents, the Armenian Catholicos-Patriarch George VI, who was present at the Conference as an observer, was invited to sign those of them with whose contents he agreed. Of the four proposed resolutions, he signed two: one was “The Vatican and the Orthodox Church,” and the other, “The Ecumenical Movement and the Orthodox Church.” By this, the Armenian Catholicos expressed his agreement with documents which, although in places bearing a political tint, are in full agreement with the Orthodox confession of the faith. Thus, in this case there is no room for any superficial associations with documents on matters of faith, imbued with a spirit of compromise and apostasy, signed jointly by Orthodox representatives with the heterodox during various ecumenical forums from the 1960s onward. From what has been said, it is clear that in this case too Mr. Kostryukov’s claim is false and of a manipulative character.

III. Concerning the report on the Anglican hierarchy

We cite the next claim of Mr. Kostryukov from his interview: “A little-known report by Bishop Seraphim on the Anglican hierarchy,” he says,

“makes it clear that he was ready for dialogue, ready to agree to certain ritual differences, provided that the Anglicans return to the Orthodox confession and to Orthodoxy...”

Let us briefly acquaint ourselves with Archbishop Seraphim’s report on the question of the Anglican hierarchy, in which Mr. Kostryukov discerns in the saint an inclination toward dialogue with the Anglicans and a readiness to agree to their ritual differences.

In the opening part of his report, St. Seraphim gives a brief historical survey of the steps which the Anglican Church, or certain of its members, took from the seventeenth to the twentieth century to pave the way for a return to the bosom of the Orthodox Church. The chief obstacle on this path is the problem of the broken apostolic succession among the Anglicans. With the acceptance of ecumenical ideas after the 1920s, some of the local Orthodox Churches declared themselves ready to recognize the validity of the Anglican hierarchy—among them were Constantinople, Jerusalem, Cyprus, Antioch, and later the Romanian and other local Churches. “It is unknown on the basis of what considerations this recognition took place,” St. Seraphim writes in his report, and he points to the absence of any documents whatsoever proving that William Barlow—the senior among those who performed the consecration of Archbishop Parker of Canterbury—is in fact the link connecting the Anglican hierarchy with the Apostles.” [11] The same, however, may also be said of the other two participants in the consecration. After recounting the many erroneous positions in the Anglican confession, St. Seraphim writes: “All these defects of the Anglican Church—the extremely negative rationalistic understandings of the sacraments of Priesthood and the Eucharist, which exist even among the English episcopate; the unclear dogmatic views of the Anglican Church; the absence within it itself of wholeness and unity; its striving to unite simultaneously both with the Orthodox Church and with heretics—we consider all this to be a great obstacle to the union of the Anglican Church with Orthodoxy...” [12] To this St. Seraphim adds its strong dependence on Masonry, and above all its exceptional entanglement with the ecumenical movement, of which it is a founder and the chief driving force in its development. The union to which the Anglican Church aspires, the saint explains, is an ecumenical union, in which it wishes to preserve its erroneous beliefs, as well as its freedom to unite simultaneously with all kinds of other churches. “In view of all this,” St. Seraphim concludes, “we cannot be optimistic. We think that this union will not be accomplished.” [13]

After this clear and realistic view of the actual state of affairs, St. Seraphim expresses the opinion that the principle of ecclesiastical economy could be applied to the Anglican Church, and that it could be joined to Orthodoxy by the third rite (that is, without its hierarchs being ordained again). But for this to happen, it must first declare its readiness to fulfill the following conditions:

“To renounce all its dogmatic errors; to exclude from the composition of its hierarchy all bishops who do not believe in the grace of the priesthood and in the grace of transubstantiation, and in the future not to admit to ordination to the rank of deacon, priest, or bishop persons holding such negative and rationalistic views; to annul all its negotiations and agreements with the non-episcopal and other heretical confessions with which the Russian Orthodox Church has no church communion; to accept in full the doctrine of the Orthodox Church and henceforth to be guided not by its symbolic books, but solely by the fundamental principles of holy Orthodoxy.

The allowance of greater leniency in the matter of the union of the Anglican Church with the Russian Orthodox Church would represent not a manifestation of our love toward the Anglicans, but our falling away from the ecclesiastical Orthodox canons...” [14]

Such is the conclusion of St. Seraphim.

After carefully reviewing and presenting in concise form the contents of the report concerning the Anglican hierarchy, we found nothing in the text that indicates in St. Seraphim any readiness for dialogue or for the acceptance of any ritual differences. The saint speaks not of dialogue, but of setting before the Anglicans clear and categorical conditions for their joining Orthodoxy, if they should truly desire this.

IV. The position of St. Seraphim on the question of the church calendar

Both in his interview and in his book A Biography of Archbishop Seraphim Sobolev, Mr. Kostryukov also touches, in a certain aspect, on the question of the church calendar. This makes it necessary for us to dwell briefly on the report “On the New and Old Style,” [15] read by the saint at the Moscow Conference in 1948.

What are the main ideas in this report? St. Seraphim clearly and consistently sets forth the grounds for rejecting the “new” calendar, both with regard to the Paschalion and the cycle of movable church feasts connected with it, and with regard to the Menaion festal cycle (the immovable feasts). In the Orthodox Church, the Lawgiver is the Holy Spirit Himself, Who through the voice of the Ecumenical Councils establishes in her dogmas and canons, so that she may abide forever as “the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15). The rejection of the Alexandrian paschal system, established at the First Ecumenical Council and safeguarded by the canons of the holy Catholic Church (7th Apostolic Canon, 1st Canon of the Council of Antioch, 7th Canon of the Second Ecumenical Council, 95th Canon of the Council in Trullo, etc.), leads not only to grave canonical transgressions, but also to a disruption of the course of the Gospel events as relived by the Church through Orthodox worship. [16]

However, the acceptance of the new style even in its compromise form is also inadmissible, when, although the Alexandrian Paschalion is preserved, the immovable feasts are celebrated according to the new style. “This mixed calendar cannot be accepted by the Orthodox,” St. Seraphim says, “because it leads to the violation of other ecclesiastical ordinances contained in the ‘Typikon’ [Ustav] and which we must observe sacredly and unfailingly, since we must not show disobedience to our Mother, the Church.” [17] The saint enumerates some of these violations, laying particular emphasis on the destruction of the Apostles’ Fast committed by the new-calendarists in those years when, because of the shifting of the immovable feasts 13 days forward, no calendar time at all remains for it.

“Some may say,” St. Seraphim writes,

“that the violation of the Typikon does not constitute a grave sin, because here there is no departure from the dogmas. But do not the words of Christ, ‘And if he neglect to hear the Church, let him be unto thee as a heathen man and a publican’ (Matt. 18:17), likewise not speak of a violation of one or another dogmatic truth of our faith? Nevertheless, according to the testimony of these divine words, whoever among us does not render obedience to the Church is cut off from her and placed in the ranks of grievous sinners, because in that case the heaviest punishment is imposed upon him—excommunication from the Church. Moreover, by their disregard for the Church Ustav [Typikon], the new-calendarists commit their sin of disobedience to the Church openly, consciously, and boldly.” (emphasis mine — M.S.) [18]

“A grave sin of disobedience to the Church”—this is how St. Seraphim characterizes the conscious neglect of the church calendar as part of the Tradition of the Church. Concerning the Church Ustav (Typikon), “the sacred law which guides us in our Orthodox worship through the services, feasts, and fasts,” the saint writes: “The Typikon is nothing other than the voice of the Church—our Mother. And to this voice we must relate not with disregard, but with unconditional and unwavering obedience, if we wish to be faithful and devoted to the holy Church and to all her Orthodox norms.” [19]

St. Seraphim considered it important that at the Moscow Conference a clear position be taken against the reform of the church calendar, which stands in contradiction to the canons and the liturgical tradition of the Orthodox Church—a reform conceived and imposed from ecumenical and church-political motives, and which in the end led to a fateful division among Orthodox Christians.

Unfortunately, on this question the Conference adopted a compromise resolution. In it, celebration of the Resurrection of Christ according to the Alexandrian Paschalion alone is recognized as obligatory for all the local Churches (points 1 and 2). As for the immovable feasts, it is stated that until such time as a more perfect calendar is devised (?!), each autocephalous Church may use the calendar already in use within it (point 3). All clergy and laity are obliged to follow the church style of that local Church within whose canonical territory they live (point 4).

St. Seraphim objected to the third point of the resolution—he did not agree that the celebration of the immovable feasts according to the new style should be considered a permissible phenomenon. On July 14 (N.S.), 1948, the saint submitted to the Commission on the calendar question his dissenting opinion on this point, in which, among other things, it is said: “Sin cannot be regarded as a permissible phenomenon. And the celebration of the immovable feasts according to the new style is undoubtedly a sin, since here there is a conscious and voluntary violation of the Typikon... In any case, to permit in the churches without any reservation the celebration of the immovable feasts according to the mixed calendar, or according to the new style in its compromise form, means to affirm and legalize that which the Orthodox Church ought to reject.” (emphasis mine — M.S.)

St. Seraphim also sent a copy of his dissenting opinion to Metropolitan Nikolai of Krutitsy. It was accompanied by a request that it be taken into account at the forthcoming plenary session on July 17. This, however, did not happen. More than that, St. Seraphim’s dissenting opinion on the church-calendar question remained unreflected even in the Acts of the Conference, published a year later in Moscow. This fact is entirely understandable: under the conditions of the Soviet regime, “dissenting” opinions were in principle not permitted. It is known that the Conference was conducted under the vigilant supervision of the Soviet authorities, and in particular of the Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church, who did not look favorably upon the saint.

In his book A Biography of Archbishop Seraphim Sobolev, Andrei Kostryukov somewhat tendentiously remarks: “Although Archbishop Seraphim was not satisfied with this decision [i.e., with the resolution on the question of the church calendar], it did not provoke active protests on his part.” [21] We do not know what Mr. Kostryukov means by the expression “active protests,” except perhaps an attempt to create the impression that the saint did not hold very strongly to his position. It is known, however, that church forums have their own definite rules for work, for speaking, for substantiating and defending opinions and views. St. Seraphim, prompted by his living episcopal conscience, worked in the most active way according to these rules, speaking responsibly and with argument on questions important for Orthodoxy. He took part in the sessions of three out of the four commissions of the Conference; within the span of only two days (July 13 and 14) he delivered three reports, and reports of very substantial content; he participated, whenever it was possible (because of the simultaneous work of the commissions), in the discussions of the reports; and he wrote a dissenting opinion on the resolution concerning the church-calendar question. It is evident that he employed in the most active way all possible means for expressing and defending his church position. St. Seraphim hardly expected that a principled resolution adopted at the Moscow Conference could lead to the abandonment of the new calendar in the local Churches that had already accepted it. But by pronouncing a clear ecclesiastical evaluation of it—an evaluation standing in full continuity with the long-established Orthodox position on this question—he stood firmly and categorically against the tendency to introduce into the local Orthodox Churches the so-called “Revised Julian Calendar.”

V. On the church-calendar reform in Bulgaria and on the dream of Bishop Parthenius of Leukia

In his interview, Mr. Andrei Kostryukov asserts: “I can say with confidence that Bishop Seraphim would never have allowed a division in the Church over the calendar style ... because the unity of the Church [22] would have been more important to him than the calendar.”

And in his book A Biography of Archbishop Seraphim Sobolev, at the end of the chapter “Archbishop Seraphim and the Moscow Conference of 1948,” Mr. Kostryukov briefly mentions the transition of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church to the new calendar style in 1968. Here, however, he expresses a much more cautious opinion on the same question, writing: “Today one can only speculate how Archbishop Seraphim would have behaved if he had been alive in 1968.”

Naturally, no one ought to dare to speculate by speaking in the saint’s name or asserting what his actions would have been if he had been alive. But unfortunately, the late Bishop Parthenius of Leukia also allowed himself this in the fragments from his letters to Archpriest Vsevolod Shpiller cited by Mr. Kostryukov. Referring to the actions of his former brethren and of the sisters of the Knyazhevo Convent of the Protection, who had refused to accept the calendar reform, the hierarch confidently declares that Bishop Seraphim would not have approved of their conduct and would have accepted the new style. At the same time, Bishop Parthenius attempts rather lightly to discredit their position. Presenting it as the fruit of blind stubbornness and recklessness, he writes in his letter:

“Bishop Seraphim had spoken at the Moscow Pan-Orthodox Conference (1948) against the calendar reform, and that was that! Just look at their mentality! No more arguments, no reasoning, no logic at all! I tell them—holiness does not mean infallibility. Otherwise, we should have to agree with Rome as well, since there have been holy popes there whose names are also entered in the Orthodox Menologion. You can talk as much as you like to a whitewashed wall.” [23]

A person who was a contemporary of the events surrounding the implementation of the church-calendar reform in our country and who knew closely the people to whom the above-cited lines were addressed can only be filled with sorrow and perplexity by these words. It turns out that Bishop Parthenius’ logic is the following: the holiness of Bishop Seraphim does not mean that the saint was sinless—something which, moreover, no one has ever claimed. On the basis of this conclusion of his, Bishop Parthenius considers that it is not obligatory to follow St. Seraphim’s position on the calendar question, which he evidently regards as erroneous. Yet nowhere does Bishop Parthenius set forth objective arguments and reasoning in favor of his own view, which he demonstrates in practice by taking an active part in the preparation and implementation of the calendar reform. [24] As for the logic to which he calls his former brethren in order that they might accept the new calendar, it is the accommodating logic of compromise, of bending before the powers of the day who imposed the calendar reform in favor of ecumenical aspirations and to the detriment of the Church. Truly, it was with this logic that the faithful spiritual children of St. Seraphim—Archimandrite Panteleimon (Staritsky), Archimandrite Seraphim (Aleksiev), Archimandrite Sergius (Yazadzhiev), Abbess Seraphima (Liven), and the clergy, nuns, and laity of like mind with them—did not agree, whatever the cost to them.

In his interview, Mr. Kostryukov speaks of a “division in the Church over the calendar style,” speculatively reducing principled disagreement with ecumenism almost to “calendar-worship.” For among the reasons why the above-mentioned spiritual children of St. Seraphim did not agree to accept the calendar reform, the most essential was its ecumenical motivation, substance, and orientation, openly declared in the Synod’s encyclical concerning its implementation. They were guarding the saint’s testament that they should have nothing whatsoever to do with ecumenism as an ecclesiological heresy. And the calendar was one link in the chain diligently forged by ecumenism as a “unifying belt” of the supposedly divided Church of Christ. Not without reason did Archimandrite Seraphim (Aleksiev) express himself figuratively with the words: “If I say ‘a,’ I shall be compelled to say ‘b’ as well—if I agree to make the first compromising step by accepting the new style, I shall inevitably have to agree to the next ones as well.” And he did not make that step. The canonical separation from the heresy of ecumenism carried out by St. Seraphim’s spiritual children was not an expression of fanatical stubbornness, but an expression of fidelity to the truths of Orthodoxy handed down to them by their grace-filled spiritual father, and at the same time an expression of fidelity to his memory.

In the last paragraph of the aforementioned chapter of his book, Mr. Kostryukov adduces as an “argument” against the “separated ones” even a dream of Bishop Parthenius—to such an extent have his objective arguments been exhausted. “Bishop Parthenius,” he writes, “also relates his dream, in which Archbishop Seraphim advises the separated ones ‘to obey Mother Church, otherwise their whole undertaking will come to ruin.’ The bishop recounted his dream to the separated nun Seraphima (Liven), but remained without an answer.” [25]

The insinuation is more than clear—the “schismatics” are proud people who do not even deign to answer the hierarch concerned for them. Yet only a person who did not know Mother Abbess Seraphima closely could think thus: the most devoted spiritual child of Bishop Seraphim from the age of seven, a witness of his labors as a saint and of his pastoral sorrows, abbess of the Convent of the Protection founded by him, and an untiring spiritual laborer until her very repose in 2004.

The incident of Bishop Parthenius’ dream is described in the personal notes of Archimandrite Seraphim (Aleksiev), who in the years of the church-calendar reform endured with great pain and evangelical meekness the inexplicable reversal in the views and conduct of his former brethren and like-minded associates—Bishop Parthenius (Stamatov) and Archimandrite Methodius (Zherev). Here is his account:

“Among other things, I received a copy of a letter sent to Mother Seraphima, the abbess of the Convent of the Protection in Knyazhevo. In it Bishop Parthenius reported a dream of his: Archbishop Seraphim appeared to him and told him to read the following words from the Akathist to St. John of Rila written by him: 1) ‘Rejoice, for in thy writings thou didst exhort the tsar to be merciful, penitent, and obedient to the Church,’ and ‘Entreat for us from the Lord Jesus Christ forgiveness of all our sins, and especially of the sin of disobedience to our Mother the Church!’ Then he told him to convey this to the disobedient. Bishop Parthenius objected: ‘They do not even want to hear me.’ And Archbishop Seraphim said: ‘Their whole undertaking will be shattered.’ And he disappeared.

“This dream caused no disturbance at all in my soul,” Archimandrite Seraphim continues, “because as a matter of principle I do not hasten to believe dreams, in the realm of which there is so much obscurity and contentiousness, subjectivity and autosuggestion, and not infrequently also cunning demonic deception. Against Bishop Parthenius’ dream I had strong counterarguments—the report of Archbishop Seraphim delivered at the Pan-Orthodox Conference in Moscow against the acceptance of the new style, as well as his clear and categorical dissenting opinion, [26] where he expressly says:

“‘The celebration of the immovable feasts according to the new style is undoubtedly a sin, since here there is a conscious and voluntary violation of the Typikon, one of the fundamental books of our Orthodox Church. Just as the dogmas, so also the holy canons and the Typikon are the voice of our Mother the Church. Not to listen to this voice means to fall into the sin called disobedience to the Church, something that is so gravely condemned by our Lord’ (Matt. 18:17).

“Bishop Parthenius’ dream now placed Archbishop Seraphim in deep contradiction with himself. According to the dream, the acceptance of the new style is obedient listening to the voice of Mother Church, whereas according to the writings of Archbishop Seraphim, fidelity to the Church Typikon and to the old style is following the voice of Mother Church. According to the dream, he who does not accept the new style manifests disobedience to the Church, whereas according to the writings of Archbishop Seraphim, he who accepts the new style does not listen to the voice of Mother Church. I preferred the trustworthy writings of Archbishop Seraphim to the dubious and subjective dream of Bishop Parthenius,” Archimandrite Seraphim concludes his note. [27]

What could we add to this moving confession of Archimandrite Seraphim—the most faithful spiritual son of St. Seraphim among his Bulgarian spiritual children? If we look at the essence of all that happened then, it would have been far more fitting for Bishop Parthenius to apply the words of his spiritual elder to his own apostate position in the preparation and carrying out of the uncanonical church-calendar reform in Bulgaria. For the abrupt turn which he made in his views before the eyes of his former brethren and before the Bulgarian church fullness shocked many of its vigilant members at the time, and remains an act worthy of sad reflection.

VI. Brief Concluding Reflections

As we reread Mr. Kostryukov’s interview, we experience again and again the sorrowful feeling that a church-political position, one that maneuvers and deals dishonestly with the facts, is being defended by nothing other than the person of St. Seraphim, who throughout his entire life was guided by a crystalline and unshakable principledness in everything pertaining to the Orthodox confession of faith and fidelity to Christ’s Church. Most likely it was precisely church-political involvement that prevented the depth and wholeness of the personality of this wondrous righteous man, wonderworker, and guardian of Orthodoxy—who united in himself the gifts of grace-filled love and knowledge of God—from being sensed and understood.

“You have now for several years been occupied with and studying the life of Archbishop Seraphim,” the interviewer says to the young historian. “It seems to me that by now you know quite well not only individual facts from his life, but also his personality. Therefore, I would ask you: if Archbishop Seraphim were alive today and were among us, what are the things with which he would not agree?

“I can say with confidence,” Mr. Kostryukov replies, “that Bishop Seraphim would never have allowed a division in the Church over the calendar style and would not have agreed with this division … because the unity of the Church would have been more important to him than the calendar.

“As for ecumenical dialogue, even today he would probably associate with the heterodox, but without exalted fraternization and without compromises with respect to our Orthodox faith.”

St. Seraphim would undoubtedly have stood for unity, but only for unity in truth. For the sake of safeguarding the truth in the holy Orthodox Church, he endured slanders, attacks, revilings, and ill-will throughout his whole life. Because of his uncompromising stance on matters of faith, he never hesitated to go against the current, to stand up against the opinions of eminent hierarchs and theologians. And it is not without significance that, when bestowing upon him the dignity of archbishop, Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky) said the following: “His Eminence Seraphim is a truly Orthodox hierarch who places Sacred Tradition higher than his own career!”

We shall also recall some highly revealing words of St. Seraphim, which testify to the extent to which he was prepared to defend the Orthodox faith. In connection with the accusations of uncanonical actions against the Moscow Patriarchate, which the Protopresbyter Sergius Bulgakov—persisting in his heresy—directed against the Council of Bishops Abroad, Archbishop Seraphim replied: “...Here it is altogether inappropriate even to mention uncanonicity, because in matters of faith it is not in the least sinful to disagree with the patriarch and with the council of one’s Church, if this highest ecclesiastical authority departs from the truths of holy Orthodoxy.” [28]

Yes, it is indeed striking that, despite all his firmness in the faith, St. Seraphim possessed exceptional meekness and was foreign to any kind of fanaticism or self-enclosure. Mr. Kostryukov justly mentions more than once the saint’s dialogical spirit, but he does not fail to associate it with ecumenical dialogue (as though in order to place the saint within a hidden church-political frame in the background). St. Seraphim truly was always ready for beneficial personal contact. Filled with grace-filled love for his neighbor, and possessing sensitivity and discernment, it was neither difficult nor dangerous for him to speak with all kinds of people—whether with his ideological opponent John Mott, [29] with whom he disputed face to face on matters of worldview, or with an educated Protestant, a Roman Catholic physician, or a theosophist, or with an outspoken communist, or with the last Bulgarian tsar, Boris III, with whom he held spiritual conversations several times. Kind, well-disposed, and delicate toward the people whom God’s providence brought into his path, St. Seraphim knew how to see in each of them first of all the human person; he strove to direct each in an appropriate way toward what was beneficial for his soul, to urge him toward the Orthodox faith, toward the path of salvation. But in all this there was not a drop of sentimentalism, flattery, or conformism. St. Seraphim was simply a holy man who not only spoke about the faith, but also lived according to the faith. This grace-filled capacity of his for converse and dialogue with people has nothing in common with the spirit of ecumenism, of ecumenical dialogue, of ecumenical meetings, or of any similar undertakings that blur and corrode church consciousness. Such initiatives the saint characterized as “disorder” and considered inadmissible.

It is well known that in his stance against ecumenical ideology and against church undertakings in an ecumenical spirit, St. Seraphim showed exceptional consistency and principledness. His categorical rejection of these phenomena, anti-Christian in their essence, was not an expression of xenophobia, narrow-mindedness, or fanaticism, but of his grace-filled knowledge, of his experiential spiritual knowledge of the path that leads to salvific union with our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ. Being conscious that in this union lies the whole meaning and happiness of human existence, he guarded the path toward it with evangelical meekness, but also with unshakable firmness, inspired by his love for God and for his neighbors.

These are the thoughts we wished to share within the framework of our brief meeting today in memory of our dear spiritual father, St. Seraphim, Wonderworker of Sofia, to whom we owe so much. May the polemical tone imposed by the circumstances not have distracted our attention from his radiant person, distinguished by grace-filled simplicity, exceptional integrity, and singleness of purpose. And these qualities of the saint found expression in his consistent, untiring labors for the preservation of the faith and piety, as well as in his self-sacrificing fatherly love and care for the salvation of the flock entrusted to him by God. Through his holy prayers, may God have mercy on and save our souls.

 

NOTES

1. A paper delivered at the celebration on the occasion of the 130th anniversary of the birth of St. Seraphim of Sofia, December 14, 2011, in the cathedral church of the Dormition of the Theotokos, Sofia, expanded.

2. The Theft of Saints. — Church Herald, no. 5, 2002. — http://synpress-classic.dveri.bg/05-2002/serafim.htm.

3. Vasily Mikhailovich Skvortsov—born in 1859 into a priestly family in the Ryazan province. He graduated from the Kiev Theological Academy. He founded an Inner Mission to combat the multiplying sects in Russia. Senior official for special assignments attached to the Governing Synod. Longtime editor of the widely known Russian journals Missionary Review (from 1896 to 1917) and Kolokol (from 1905 to 1917). In Petersburg he set up a large printing house for missionary purposes. During the Bolshevik revolution he was several times miraculously saved from death. In 1920 he emigrated to Yugoslavia. He took part in the First Russian Church Council Abroad in 1921. He taught at the Sarajevo Seminary. He died in 1932.

4. Journal No. 6 of the Russian All-Abroad Church Council, Session of November 16/29, 1921. — In: Acts of the Russian All-Diaspora Council, held November 8–21, 1921 (November 21–December 3) in Sremski Karlovci in the Kingdom of S.H. and S. Sremski Karlovci, 1922, p. 45.

5. Instruction to the Russian All-Abroad Church Council. — In: Acts..., p. 14.

6. The departments were the following: Higher and District Church Administration Abroad, Parishes, Educational Activity, Missionary Activity, Economic Questions, Judicial Proceedings, Spiritual Regeneration of Russia, Military-Church Affairs (point 17 of the Regulations).

7. This Council consisted of the Secretary of the Assembly and four other persons—two clergymen (a bishop and a priest) and two laymen (point 14 of the Regulations).

8. YMCA — Young Men’s Christian Association. In usage, the abbreviation “YMCA” or the translated title “Christian Youth Union” is employed.

9. Objectivity obliges us to note that in the context of the circumstances of 1921, the idea of creating a pan-Christian front for the struggle against socialism should not automatically be understood as an undertaking of an ecumenical character. The Council was being held at a time when hundreds of thousands of Russian émigrés (and according to some data, 2 million), driven from their homeland, were living in extremely difficult conditions. The lot of a large part of the population in Soviet Russia was also unbearable, where an unprecedented famine was beginning. The Russian Church Council Abroad, in the persons of its hierarchs, was compelled to ask for material and moral support from European governments and from humanitarian and religious organizations. To this end, the Council issued an “Appeal to all God-believing governments and peoples throughout the world,” as well as a “Message to the World Conference in Genoa.” In these circumstances, the idea of a call for the creation of a spiritual pan-Christian front against socialism may also have been prompted by a desire that the European Christian peoples be protected from the “communist God-fighting spirit threatening the world,” as Mr. Kostryukov notes.

10. Acts of the Second All-Diaspora Council of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad with the participation of representatives of the clergy and laity, held August 1/14–11/24, 1938, in Sremski Karlovci in Yugoslavia, p. 369. Belgrade, 1939. Unfortunately, in the Acts the address of St. Seraphim is given only in abridged outline form.

11. Sobolev, Seraphim, Archbishop. On the Question of the Union of the Anglican Church with the Orthodox Church. — Acts of the Conference of the Heads and Representatives of the Autocephalous Orthodox Churches. Vol. II. Moscow, 1949, p. 251.

12. Ibid., p. 261.

13. Ibid., p. 264.

14. Ibid., p. 265.

15. Sobolev, Seraphim, Archbishop. On the New and Old (Gregorian and Julian) Style. — Acts of the Conference of the Heads and Representatives of the Autocephalous Orthodox Churches. Vol. II, pp. 305–317.

16. Ibid., pp. 306–309.

17. Ibid., p. 309.

18. Ibid., p. 311.

19. Ibid.

20. Acts of the Conference of the Heads and Representatives of the Autocephalous Orthodox Churches. Vol. II, pp. 432–433.

21. Kostryukov, Andrei. A Biography of Archbishop Seraphim (Sobolev). Sofia, 2011, p. 137.

22. Here too there is evidently discernible the incorrect understanding of the Church as an earthly organization and administrative structure, whose unity and canonicity are in no way bound up with fidelity to the truths of the Orthodox faith. This conception has become a foundational component of the ideology of contemporary official Orthodoxy.

23. Kostryukov, Andrei. Op. cit., p. 138. Note: In the Bulgarian edition, the translation of the cited letter is in places incorrect. Here the fragment is cited from the Russian original.

24. Zlatev, Zlati. The Calendar and the Paschalion against the Background of History. Sofia, 2001, pp. 413–421. The same is also testified in his notes by Archimandrite Seraphim (Aleksiev).

25. Ibid., p. 138.

26. This refers to the dissenting opinion of St. Seraphim on the church-calendar question, submitted at the Pan-Orthodox Conference in Moscow in 1948.

27. Archimandrite Seraphim (Aleksiev). Personal Notes — manuscript, pp. 69–71.

28. Sobolev, Seraphim, Archbishop. A Defense of the Sophia Heresy by Protopresbyter Sergius Bulgakov before the Council of Bishops of the Russian Church Abroad. Sofia, 1937, pp. 4–5.

30. John Raleigh Mott was an American theologian. Chairman of the International Missionary Council and of the International Alliance of the YMCA, and recipient of the 1946 Nobel Peace Prize together with Emily Balch.

 

Bulgarian source: https://bulgarian-orthodox-church.org/rr/lode/MSeraphima/KZSS.html