Challenging the Moscow Patriarchate: Is ROCOR-MP Finally Awakening to Their Sergianist Masters?
- Subdeacon Nektarios, M.A.
- 6 days ago
- 9 min read
Subdeacon Nektarios, M.A.
On June 5th, 2025, the Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia – Moscow Patriarchate (ROCOR-MP) released a statement entitled "Statement by the Synod of Bishops on the Renewal of 20th-Century Ideologies in Russia."
In this encyclical, the ROCOR-MP Synod—after seventeen years of silence, cowardice, and betrayal of the true Russian Orthodox Church Abroad (ROCA), which never submitted to Soviet masters—has finally decided to make a peep. Now, reluctantly, ROCOR-MP acknowledges that the satanic leviathan they entered into Eucharistic communion with—the Soviet-created Moscow Patriarchate—has never truly changed. Early in the text, there is a clear allusion that the Russian Federation is effectively a continuation of the USSR, and that the supposed revival of Orthodoxy in Russia served primarily as a political tool wielded by former Soviet officials turned Federation politicians. In this encyclical, the ROCOR-MP Synod states:
We find that in a time of crisis and growing confrontation amongst nations, aspects of the Russian state and society are wandering onto an extremely dangerous path: instead of the promulgation of Christian repentance and purification, we observe in certain circles a return to a false, God-opposing ideology that prevailed in the last century. This return is fraught with harmful consequences. Should it continue, we fear that modern Russia risks being considered a dark stain amongst the nations, marked by a revival of spiritual corruption, instead of her being a radiant beacon of Orthodox Truth, which is surely the calling to which her long history of Christian piety directs her [1]
What the Synod is referring to here are the apparent changes in the state document titled “The Concept of State Policy on the Commemoration of the Victims of Political Repression,” as well as the numerous public and ecclesiastical revivals and glorifications of various Soviet totalitarian figures—both governmental and ecclesiastical.
Regarding the document “The Concept of State Policy on the Commemoration of the Victims of Political Repression,” the Synod states the following:
The state document, “The Concept of State Policy on the Commemoration of the Victims of Political Repression,” which concerns those condemned under the Communist regime, was revised in 2024, evidencing notable alterations to the previous version (of 2015). These changes cannot but cause alarm amongst Orthodox believers, for they indicate a rising tendency to whitewash the crimes of the God-fighting regime of the twentieth century. When the revised version of this document was mentioned in the context of a report from a government advisor at the last official meeting of the “Ecclesial-Social Council under the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia for the Commemoration of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church,” the representative of the ROCOR [MP] at that meeting already raised questions about the serious problems associated with it and other recent trends. We feel we must now add to this our synodal voice.
Instead of a sober reflection on the essence of the criminal regime that cost Russia countless victims over decades, instead of a deepening of the people’s understanding and memory of the tragedy that befell them (a task actively undertaken by the Ecclesial-Social Council), the new “Concept” document demonstrates a backwards-step and a tendency to curtail this spiritually significant subject. The previous version, on many issues, opened the door of repentance. The new one closes it, precisely through the silencing and distortion of history [2].
In addition to this policy shift by the Russian government, both the state and the Church have consistently promoted godless Soviet figures within Russian society—figures who actively persecuted the Church of Christ during the Russian Revolution. After seventeen years of deafening silence, the ROCOR-MP Synod has now acknowledged that, in reality, nothing has changed in Russia. The so-called resurgence of Orthodoxy following the fall of the USSR was, in truth, nothing more than a façade.
Of course, as you might expect, they said as much without actually having the courage to say it plainly. However, what this Synod of Judases did manage to say regarding the public glorification of Soviet propaganda in Russia is the following:
In practical terms, this mentality could be nowhere more visible than in the appalling installation of statues of the criminal figures of Stalin and Dzerzhinsky, which have recently been erected in Moscow, as if in public tribute to individuals whose inhuman and anti-Christian crimes were amongst the worst of the twentieth century; and in the recent announcements that the idolatrous mausoleum on Red Square, rather than being removed, is in fact set to undergo restoration [3].
We must ask: where have they been for the last seventeen years, that only now this has become a problem worth addressing? The Soviet-created Moscow Patriarchate has been promoting these satanic figureheads ever since the supposed "collapse" of the Soviet Union in 1991. They have not only glorified Stalin, Lenin, and Dzerzhinsky, but have also persistently venerated betrayers of Christ—such as the pseudo-patriarch Sergius—and Metropolitan Nikodim Rotov, the infamous deathbed Latin Papist of sorry memory.
In reality, these public displays of Soviet propaganda have been ongoing for far longer. What is worse is that this isn’t obscure or hidden knowledge to these bishops. On the well-known YouTube channel of Gregory Decapolite—a staunch supporter of the Russian Catacomb Church and the uncompromised part of the Church Abroad that refused to capitulate in cowardice to the Sergianists in Moscow—there have been videos for over six years exposing this very reality. These videos include footage, photographs, and other media showing Soviet imagery across Russia and in their so-called churches: portraits of the betrayer of Christ, "Patriarch" Sergius; Soviet red stars and symbols embedded in new cathedrals; clergy posing beside statues of Lenin and Stalin; priests blessing these same monuments; and even icons depicting these anti-Christ figures.
Further on in the document, the Synod protests that the Russian government and the Soviet Patriarchate have reneged on their supposed recognition of the many clergy and laity unjustly condemned or martyred during the Soviet era. In a particularly shocking example, the encyclical recounts how a Soviet propagandist professor in Russia openly blamed Tsar-Martyr Saint Nicholas for the destruction of Russia, stating that had he been alive at the time, he would have personally executed the Tsar. The Synod recalls this disturbing episode as follows:
An example of the character of this new activity was revealed when, in the mass media, a well- known professor—respected by many in Russia—recently stated that it was Tsar Nicholas II who in fact destroyed and ruined Russia, who even led it into war. Such may be this individual’s personal opinion, wholly echoing the Bolshevik propaganda of the early twentieth century; but to those who know how the Ekaterinburg murder unfolded, this man’s words about the Tsar, “I would have shot him myself,” sound ominous indeed [4].
Where was the Synod when the Soviet Patriarchate, in its supposed canonization of the New Martyrs, deliberately excluded Saint Joseph of Petrograd and many other so-called Josephites from that list? Where were they when Saint Basil of Kineshma was quietly removed from the Church calendar in 2012? At the time, the Soviet Moscow Patriarchate declared: “We have a new, corrected Church calendar. If we are Church people and understand what the Church hierarchy is, then we need to perceive this new calendar as a Church document that guides us,” adding that the removal had “been confirmed and blessed by Patriarch Kirill” [5].
Where was the voice of this Synod over all these years, as their Tobacco Patriarch continued to glorify the memory of the Christ-betrayer Sergius? In a recent video, Kirill of Moscow—also known by his KGB codename, Mikhailov—declares in a homily:
Patriarch Sergius was able to carry our church out of that difficult and crisis-ridden position which manifested itself in an open conflict between the church and the state. The conditions of the political system that existed in our country, such an open conflict, could not end in anything prosperous for the church. It was necessary to look for paths to exit out of this conflict. And so, holy Patriarch Sergius, found these exits. Some did not like this, especially those who lived far away [ROCOR], outside of our fatherland, who did not risk anything, took a different position, but that he created a direct contact with the highest authorities of our country, at that time, having a salvific significance for the existence of our church [6].
Where was the Synod every time the Christ-denier Sergius was promoted as a holy patriarch who "saved" the Church—as if the Church of Christ required saving through his capitulation to the Jewish Bolsheviks? This Synod of Bishops has, for seventeen years, been flaccid, decadent, indulgent, and weak since entering Eucharistic communion with the Soviet-created leviathan.
They have utterly ignored the legacy of their own forebears, who, in October 1943, declared as a Synod: “The election of Metropolitan Sergius to the See of the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia is an act not only uncanonical, but also non-ecclesiastical and purely political—driven by the interests of the Soviet Communist government and its leader, dictator Stalin, who, facing a grave crisis during the war, sought the help of the Orthodox Church, which they had hated and openly persecuted until recently.” [7]
They have also turned a deaf ear to their own saintly First Hierarch, Metropolitan Philaret of New York, who spoke forcefully and unambiguously concerning the Christ-betrayer Sergius and the Soviet false church, stating:
Moreover, when this shameful declaration was issued, the catacomb, true Orthodox Church separated from the official Soviet false church, and going underground, it anathematized the Soviet official church once again. Consequently, this “church” has been anathematized twice by the legitimate Church authority. We are taught by the Apostle Paul and the Church in general that the Church is the Body of Christ, that the Lord Jesus Christ Himself and His grace and Truth, who are in Him and with Him, reside in the Church. And tell me, can a believing mind and a believing heart admit that Christ is in this organization that cooperates with his besotted enemies, praises them, blesses them, and even goes hand in hand with them? Of course, this is impossible. Therefore, I think that our Church, I’d say, has never expressed this in the form of global discussion and condemnation, but I am convinced that there is no grace and cannot be in this very Soviet false church, because it has retreated from faithfulness to Christ, and Christ the Savior is not there and cannot be there. This is my earnest conviction. I’m not imposing it on anyone, but I’m speaking frankly, as I think [8].
And what did they do to honor the memory of Saint Philaret? Was it to promote his memory, his patristic teachings, or to proclaim the miracle of his incorrupt relics to the faithful? No—of course not. It was under the agenda of Metropolitan Laurus that news of his incorrupt relics was suppressed. Rather than venerate him openly, they chose to hide this holy revelation from the faithful, betraying his legacy entirely. His sacred vestments were sent, not to his spiritual heirs, but to those who venerate Sergius, Stalin, and Lenin. [9] So now we must ask: what are they going to do, beyond writing an obscure encyclical that claims to raise their voices and to "call on all to recognize their authentic history, both outside of Russia and within it?” [10] Will they break communion with the Sergianist Moscow Patriarchate—the very institution that dragged them into Sergianism, into the pan-heresy of Ecumenism, and into the World Council of Churches?
