The Price of Unity with Moscow: How The Russian Church Abroad Turned Its Back on Three New Martyrs
- Subdeacon Nektarios, M.A.
- 5 minutes ago
- 10 min read
Subdeacon Nektarios, M.A.
In the life of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia prior to the false union of 2007, there were always clearly defined criteria that had to be met before ROCOR would ever consider any form of union with the Moscow Patriarchate. In a primary-source document from the ROCOR–MP milieu, the Sergianist priest George Lardas, writing in defense of reconciliation, enumerates many of the conditions that historic ROCOR had long required before even preliminary discussions of union with the Moscow Patriarchate could take place. In his open letter, Lardas writes:
In the past, in reply to overtures from the Moscow Patriarchate, our Synod of Bishops had stated the conditions on which we would consider reconciliation: 1) Renunciation of the lie that there was no persecution under the Soviet government, and the glorification of the New Martyrs; 2) Renunciation of collaboration with the atheist government (Sergianism); 3) Withdrawal from the Ecumenical Movement and the World Council of Churches; and 4) Removal of unworthy and compromised clergy [1].
As we know, most of this did not occur prior to the union. To this very day, the Russian Federation, in cooperation with the Moscow Patriarchate, is actively reviving Soviet iconography and even incorporating it into churches, most notably in the Moscow Patriarchate’s military cathedral, while also displaying Soviet imagery throughout Russian society. This revival of Soviet communism in Russia has become such a serious problem that even the ROCOR-MP Synod of Bishops felt compelled to issue a statement addressing it, though without directly naming communism in the title of their encyclical, owing to their cowardice and fear of their Soviet KGB patriarch and of the Russian Federation itself [2].
For the Russian Church Abroad the recognition and canonization of the New Martyrs of Russia was one of the most significant points of contention between the ROCOR and the Moscow Patriarchate. For the Russian Church Abroad this denial of these new martyrs by the Moscow Patriarchate would be a major reason why any union would be an absolute impossibility. In October of 1970, Saint Philaret of New York in an interview gave his opinion on this saying,
The Moscow Patriarchate in its current form consists of individuals selected by the atheist government, completely controlled by it, and lacking any freedom […] The main sign of the Patriarchate’s lack of freedom is that it does not glorify the countless new martyrs of the Russian Church; instead, it mocks their memory by claiming that there has been no persecution of the Church in the USSR—nor has there ever been. [3].
Likewise, the Synod of the Russian Church Abroad, in its 1987 epistle to the faithful, emphasized this point, stating that it would not even commemorate the Baptism of Rus’ together with the Moscow Patriarchate because of the “denial by the Patriarchate of Moscow of the martyrs and confessors of our time.” The Synod continues, “It is impossible to say that we have had no martyrs for the Faith, as we have heard repeatedly from the lips of representatives of the Patriarchate of Moscow; we cannot remain silent about their struggle or avoid speaking about it” [4].
Throughout historic ROCOR’s eighty-year existence, this was always their position concerning the New Martyrs and the Moscow Patriarchate. This, of course, was well known to the MP itself, since ROCOR consistently rebuffed them for this very issue. However, in 2000, the Moscow Patriarchate, in order to appease ROCOR and remove this obstacle, canonized the New Martyrs of Russia—at least, this is what the newly formed ROCOR-MP would have you believe. In another primary-source document produced by the Sergianist priest Nikolai Artemoff of the German Diocese of ROCOR-MP, he authors an apologetic piece entitled, “What Does Canonical Communion Mean for Us?” and states:
The question of glorifying the Holy New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, who were for so long an obstacle to rapprochement, was removed from the agenda thanks to the Council of the Moscow Patriarchate of 2000, which decided to glorify the entire host of New Martyrs [5].
In the same encyclical concerning the “renewal of 20th-century ideologies in Russia,” published in June of 2025, this narrative regarding the Moscow Patriarchate and the New Martyrs is repeatedly asserted. The document states: “In 1981, our Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia glorified the full host of the holy New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia. Later, the Moscow Patriarchate followed this example” [6].
This line is now continually promoted by nearly all ROCOR–MP clergy who serve as propagandists for the Moscow Patriarchate and who have willingly capitulated to this heretical pseudo-church. The crucial question, however, is whether the Moscow Patriarchate in fact “glorified the entire host of New Martyrs.” The answer is clear: no, it did not.
As a matter of historical record, the Moscow Patriarchate rejected a number of New Martyrs who were canonized by Saint Philaret of New York and the ROCOR Synod in 1981. Two of these have always been rejected by the Moscow Patriarchate: Saint Joseph of Petrograd, the founder of the Catacomb Church, and the Hieromartyr Saint Theodore (Pozdeyevsky). In a recent video published in Russia, Priest Alexander Mazyrin, a professor at the Moscow Patriarchate’s Saint Tikhon’s Orthodox University, confirms that the Moscow Patriarchate does not acknowledge these two as saints.
In the case of Saint Joseph of Petrograd, this rejection is largely due to the fact that members of the Moscow Patriarchate’s canonization commission object to his acknowledged role as the founder of Russia’s Catacomb Church and to his rejection of any legitimacy claimed by the pseudo-patriarch Sergius to the patriarchal throne. According to this professor at the Moscow Patriarchate’s Saint Tikhon’s Orthodox University, some members of the canonization commission assert that both figures “confessed” to being members of the Catacomb Church, in the case of Saint Joseph explicitly, and in the case of Saint Theodore for a similar reason.
In 2012, the Soviet-created Moscow Patriarchate proceeded to de-canonize another Russian New Martyr, Saint Basil of Kineshma, who to this day remains canonized in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. No clear or official reason was provided by the Moscow Patriarchate for this de-canonization. However, in The Making of the New Martyrs of Russia: Soviet Repression in Orthodox Memory, Karin Hyldal Christensen notes that the Orthodox journalist Kseniya Luchenko assumes that this de-canonization was based on interrogation documents produced by the Soviet secret police, though no definitive explanation was ever given. Christensen addresses this event directly, writing:
According to Orthodox journalist Kseniya Luchenko, however, anonymous members of the Synodal Canonization Commission had informed her that the commission never discussed the de-canonizations of new martyrs at any sessions of the Synodal Canonization Commission. Merely ‘two members of it, one of whom was Hegumen Damaskin, requested and reviewed some documents’. In Luchenko’s view, the most plausible explanation for the ‘mysteriously disappeared 36 new martyrs from the Church calendar’ is that they had ‘given false testimonies’ during interrogations by the NKVD, or that other ‘biographical circumstances’ had occurred. […] On 29 January 2013, Hegumen Damaskin informed the Orthodox website pravmir.ru that the 2013 Church calendar had been confirmed and blessed by Patriarch Kirill. Hegumen Damaskin said, ‘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’ [7].
As this demonstrates, no substantive reason is given for the de-canonization, and the faithful are simply expected to accept what the KGB patriarch has approved and to obey without question. It should also be noted that the Moscow Patriarchate de-canonized thirty-five of its own figures who had never been canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia in 1981.
What must also be noted is the general disposition of those company men of the Moscow Patriarchate and how they in fact regard the so-called Catacomb Saints, especially Saint Joseph of Petrograd. As an illustration, the well-known and openly proud Sergianist priest Daniel Sysoev, an unapologetic devotee of the sorry memory of the pseudo-patriarch Sergius, authored a lengthy treatise entitled The Catacomb Schism. In this work, he slanders the Catacomb saints as schismatic apostates and claims that their resistance to the Soviet pseudo-church was inspired by the “winds of hell.” In his article, he states the following concerning Saint Joseph of Petrograd:
However, despite the measures that were undertaken, the schism developed with the speed of a forest fire, fanned by the winds of hell. Seeing this, Metropolitan Sergius, together with the Synod, issued a decision to convene a Local Council. And without waiting for it, they issued a decision of the court of first instance in the case of the Leningrad mutineers, fully in accordance with the canons (Apostolic Canon 74; Council of Carthage, Canon 12).
The Synod confirmed the prohibition of Bishops Dmitry and Sergius, removed them from their sees, and committed them to the judgment of Orthodox bishops. It sent representatives of the Synod to Metropolitan Joseph, demanding that he condemn the rebellion, and proposed that Bishops Gregory of Shlisselburg and Seraphim of Kolpino define their position toward the Church. Unfortunately, having fallen into delusion, Metropolitan Joseph did not heed the voice of the Bride of Christ and in February 1928 departed from Her forever. He and the other bishops—schismatics—were prohibited from serving by decree of the Synod on 14 (27) March 1928 [8].
In 2013, the Patriarchal Synod of the Moscow Patriarchate issued an encyclical entitled The Council of Bishops to Discuss Differences in the Veneration of the Holy New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia. This document is concerned primarily with when the New Martyrs are to be celebrated, so that the Moscow Patriarchate and its subordinate churches will observe this feast on the same date. What this Patriarchal Synod document does not do is accept all of the canonizations of the New Martyrs as proclaimed by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia.
Rather, in this document Patriarch Kirill and the Synod set forth the rules that are to be followed by all jurisdictions subordinate to the Moscow Patriarchate. In the document, the Patriarchal Synod states:
His Holiness also recalled the method of introducing new names into the list of already canonized Holy New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia established by the Act of Canonization of the Jubilee Council of Bishops of 2000: ‘In the post-Council period, the naming of individual New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia into the list already glorified by the Council is to be conducted only with the blessing of His Holiness the Patriarch and the Holy Synod, on the basis of preliminary research conducted by the Synodal Commission on the Canonization of Saints.
I would like to point out that according to this decision, it is impossible to canonize New Martyrs merely as local saints,’ stressed the Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church [9].
As we can see, the question becomes how the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia entered into union with the Moscow Patriarchate when one of the primary criteria throughout eighty years of ROCOR history was the canonization of the Host of New Martyrs, which includes Saint Joseph, Saint Theodore, and Saint Basil—figures whom the Moscow Patriarchate rejects.
This question concerning the Moscow Patriarchate’s open rejection of these three Russian New Martyrs further raises the issue of whether the very canonization of 1981, conducted by Saint Philaret of New York and the ROCOR Synod, was effectively nullified by the 2007 Act of Canonical Communion, which states: “Acts issued previously which preclude the fullness of canonical communion are hereby deemed invalid or obsolete” [10].
Taken together, these facts demonstrate that the ROCOR–MP bishops did not merely exercise poor judgment in 2007 but entered into union on the basis of claims they knew, or should have known, were false. For eighty years, the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia maintained with absolute consistency that communion with the Moscow Patriarchate was impossible without the full recognition and canonization of all the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia. Yet the Moscow Patriarchate continues to reject, marginalize, or even de-canonize figures central to ROCOR’s 1981 glorification, while openly slandering the Catacomb saints and their resistance as schismatic rebellion inspired by the “winds of hell.” This renders the assurances given at the time of the union demonstrably untrue. The union therefore rests on a foundational falsehood concerning the very criterion that ROCOR itself had always deemed non-negotiable.
Even more troubling, the Act of Canonical Communion establishes a concrete and enduring mechanism of juridical and ecclesiological control that exposes the deeper consequences of the union. The document explicitly declares that prior synodal acts which “preclude the fullness of canonical communion” are now deemed invalid or obsolete, a provision that was clearly applied to the 1983 Anathema against ecumenism, a formal judicial act of the ROCOR Synod. This understanding is confirmed by the testimony of Archbishop Gabriel of Montreal, a sitting member of the ROCOR–MP Synod, who stated that without the Act of Canonical Communion ROCOR would have fallen under its own anathema, thereby admitting that the anathema had to be neutralized for the union to proceed [11]. If such a synodal anathema defining heresy could be rescinded by the union, there is no principled basis for asserting that the 1981 canonizations, likewise formal synodal acts defining sanctity, were not rendered equally precarious or null in canon law.
This concern is further intensified by the fact that the First Hierarch of ROCOR–MP must have his election confirmed by the Patriarch of Moscow and the Patriarchal Synod, and that all episcopal consecrations are subject to the same external confirmation. This grants the Moscow Patriarchate an effective veto over who may govern ROCOR–MP and who may even become a bishop within it. Such control is not incidental but structural, embedded directly into the post-2007 ecclesiastical order. Under these conditions, it is incoherent to claim that the Moscow Patriarchate would not exercise similar authority over matters of sanctity and canonization. If an external body can determine who governs the Church and who may become a bishop, then it necessarily determines which saints may be glorified and which figures, such as Saint Philaret of New York or Saint Seraphim Rose, must remain unacceptable due to their uncompromising condemnation of the Soviet-created Moscow Patriarchate.
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