The Orthodox Church in the Twentieth Century

NEW ZION IN BABYLON

The Orthodox Church in the Twentieth Century

PART 4. BETWEEN THE HAMMER AND THE ANVIL (1941-1964)

Vladimir Moss

© Copyright, 2013,Vladimir Moss. All Rights Reserved.

Contents

THE GENOCIDE OF THE SERBIAN ORTHODOX 3

GERMAN-OCCUPIED RUSSIA 11

THE PSKOV MISSION AND THE CATACOMB CHURCH 16

THE CHURCH IN BELORUSSIA AND UKRAINE 20

ORTHODOXY AND PAGANISM IN MANCHURIA 24

ROCOR AND THE GERMANS 26

THE STALIN-SERGIUS PACT 31

THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE PACT 40

THE FALSE MOSCOW COUNCIL OF 1945 46

THE TRAGEDY OF THE VLASOVITES 51

ROCOR MOVES TO AMERICA 56

THE GREEK CHURCH DURING THE WAR 61

THE SECRET OFFENSIVE: (1) INSIDE THE USSR 66

THE SOVIET OFFENSIVE: (2) OUTSIDE THE USSR 72

ARCHBISHOP JOHN OF SHANGHAI 78

THE POST-WAR SERBIAN CHURCH 86

OTHER EAST EUROPEAN CHURCHES 100

MORE SOVIET COUNCILS 103

THE WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES 107

DIVISIONS IN THE GREEK CHURCH 110

THE NEW CALENDARIST OFFENSIVE 119

PATRIARCH ATHENAGORAS OF CONSTANTINOPLE 127

ROMANIAN RE-EDUCATION 132

THE CULT OF STALIN 136

ROCOR AT THE CROSSROADS 139

THE COMMUNISTS BECOME ECUMENISTS 153

THE KHRUSCHEV PERSECUTION 162

THE PASSPORTLESS MOVEMENT 167

THE FLORINITES RECEIVE A HIERARCHY 175

THE ROMANIANS RECEIVE A HIERARCHY 179

SHOWDOWN IN SAN FRANCISCO 185

THE GENOCIDE OF THE SERBIAN ORTHODOX

By the beginning of the Second World War, the Orthodox Church, having suffered the most terrible and sustained onslaught from the powers of evil in her history, was almost unrecognizable from her pre-revolutionary glory. The sergianist Moscow Patriarchate, on the one hand, and the newcalendarist Churches of Constantinople, Alexandria, Greece and Romania, on the other, could no longer be counted as truly Orthodox in their official confession. The Churches of Serbia, Bulgaria and Jerusalem were still Orthodox – but they had not broken communion with those Churches that had fallen away from the truth, so the prospects of their remaining free from the quicksands of “World Orthodoxy” for long were not good. The situation of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad was only a little better – she was not in communion with the Moscow Patriarchate, but had not broken decisively with the other heretical Churches, and even her attitude to Moscow was not entirely unambiguous. The Greek Old Calendarist Church was strong in the faith, but tragically divided. The Romanian Old Calendarists were also strong, but as yet had no bishops. The Catacomb Church of Russia was bathed in the glory of a vast multitude of new martyrs and confessors; but the whole apparatus of the most evil and most powerful state in history was directed towards her complete annihilation…

Could the outbreak of world war bring relief to the Orthodox Church? Or would it consolidate the power of the antichristian powers ranged against her? That was the question in the early months of 1941…

On April 6, 1941 the Germans invaded Yugoslavia. Archbishop Averky writes: “The unexpected German bombardment of Belgrade on April 6, 1941, which soon decided the fate of Yugoslavia, produced such a shattering impression that the capital was completely abandoned, both by the government organs and by the ordinary inhabitants, who fled in indescribable panic for many tens of kilometers. Amidst this complete devastation it was only in the life of the Russian church in Belgrade that no essential changes took place: the services prescribed by the Typicon continued as usual, while priests went with the Holy Gifts around the city, giving communion to the wounded and carrying out prayer services in the refuges. During the raid Metropolitan Anastasy remained at his hierarchical place in the altar, while the clergy took it in turns to serve prayer services in front of the wonder-working Kursk-Root icon of the Mother of God ‘of the Sign’. And this in spite of the fact that five bombs fell in the immediate vicinity of our church, the neighbouring Serbian church of St. Mark burned down, and for a whole two days a gigantic fire from a warehouse full of logs that had been hit by a bomb burned just next to the wall of the church. On the second day, March 25 / April 7, on the very feast of the Annunciation, when there was a particularly violent bombardment, Vladyka Metropolitan was present at the Divine Liturgy which one of the priests celebrated in the basement of the Russian House for the many Russian people who had sheltered there. This liturgy, which was carried out in a situation recalling that of the ancient Catacomb Christians, was sealed for life in the memory of all those who received communion at it. And with the blessing of Vladyka Metropolitan up to 300 people received communion after a general confession (this was in view of the danger of death that clearly threatened everyone).

“Exactly a week later, on Lazarus Saturday, the Germans entered the completely destroyed and deserted city, and difficult years began for the Russian emigration in Yugoslavia. Together with the whole of his Belgrade flock, Vladyka Metropolitan nobly endured hunger and cold and all kinds of restrictions and deprivations, various unpleasantnesses from the German occupying authorities and hostile attacks from that part of the Serbian population which had submitted to the influence of communist propaganda.

“Soon after the occupation of Yugoslavia by the German armies, members of the Gestapo carried out a thorough search in the residence of Vladyka Metropolitan Anastasy, and then took away the clerical work of the Hierarchical Synod.[1] However, they were forced to admit that Vladyka, as a true Archpastor of the Church of Christ, was profoundly alien to all politics, and they left him in peace.”[2]

Deserted by the Croats, the Serbian resistance was soon crushed. The Germans arrested Patriarch Gabriel and Bishop Nicholas Velimirovich; but although the two hierarchs were to spend the whole war in prisons and concentration camps (the last one was Dachau), they refused the Nazis’ suggestion that they collaborate with them.”[3] The Bulgarians occupied Yugoslav Macedonia and expelled Metropolitan Joseph of Skopje and Bishop Vincent of Zletovo-Strumica, together with many Serbian priests, to Serbia; seven priests and thousands of laity were killed by the Hungarians in Vojvodina; and the Italians occupied Kosovo, where Albanian nationalists killed and plundered.[4] Nine Serbian hierarchs were killed, including Metropolitans Dositheus of Zagreb and Peter of Bosnia, and Bishops Sabbas of Karlovac, Plato of Banja Luka, Nicholas of Herzegovina and Seraphim of Ryashko-Prizren (the last in an Albanian prison).[5]

In neighbouring Czechoslovakia Bishop Gorazd of Moravia-Silesia, a convert from Catholicism, had since his consecration in 1921 been waging a noble battle returning the Czech lands to the faith of Saints Cyril and Methodius. At the beginning of the war, after being cut off from the Serbian Patriarchate, to which he was canonically subject, he turned to ROCOR’s Metropolitan Seraphim (Lyade) in Berlin, asking him to take his diocese under his protection. Metropolitan Seraphim agreed, and gave him holy chrism and antimensia. However, in 1942 saboteurs killed the Nazi Gauleiter Heidrich in Prague. They were given refuge in the crypt of the Orthodox cathedral of Saints Cyril and Methodius in Prague. When Bishop Gorazd heard about this some days later, he was very disturbed, knowing that if the Germans discovered this hiding-place, then the whole of the Czech Orthodox Church would be subjected to repressions. Before going to Berlin, where Metropolitan Seraphim had invited him to participate in the consecration of a bishop, he asked for the saboteurs to be removed to another hiding-place as soon as possible. Soon the Nazis discovered the hiding-place and on July 18 seven of the saboteurs were killed. Two of the cathedral’s priests and other Orthodox were arrested (the priests were later shot). Bishop Gorazd did not try to save his own life, but took the whole responsibility upon himself. He wrote to the authorities: “I place myself at the disposal of the corresponding authorities and am ready to accept any punishment, including the death penalty.” On July 27 he was arrested, and on September 4, after being tortured, he was shot. The Orthodox Church in Bohemia and Moravia was shut down and its priests sent to camps in Germany.[6]

But by far the worst atrocities were committed against the Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia by the Ustashi and the Catholic Church in the newly independent state of Croatia, which had been recognized by the Vatican. On April 28, 1941, the Catholic Archbishop Stepinac of Zagreb issued an appeal rapturously praising the Ustashi regime of Ante Pavlevic and calling on all Catholic priests to collaborate with it. Three days before, the government had issued a series of decrees banning the Cyrillic script, closing all Orthodox schools, imposing a special tax on the patriarchate, forcing all Serbs to wear coloured armbands with the letter “P” (for Pravoslovac – Orthodox) and banning the use of the term “Serbian Orthodox religion”. On June 22 the minister of education said that one third of the Serbs in Croatia would be expelled, one third killed and one third converted to Catholicism. In July the arrests of Serbs began. By the autumn over 15,000 Serbs had passed through the camps, and by 1943 there were 300,000 Serbia refugees from Croatia in Serbia.

On December 4, the Croatians passed a law ordering all Church feasts to be celebrated according to the new calendar. The Russian émigrés were informed of this, and were threatened with punishment if they did not obey. Metropolitan Anastasy, however, immediately petitioned for an exception to be made for the Russian parishes, and with the help of the German Evangelical Bishop Hackel, on March 26, 1942, this request was granted. However, no Serb was allowed to visit the émigré services.[7]

Joachim Wertz writes: “In many villages the massacres followed a certain pattern. The Ustashi would arrive and assemble all the Serbs. They would then order them to convert to Catholicism. Those who refused, as the majority did, were told to assemble in their local Orthodox parish church. They would then lock them in the church and set it ablaze. In this manner many Orthodox men, women and children perished in scores of Serbian settlements.”[8]

According to Archbishop Stepinac’s report to the Pope on May 8, 1944, 240,000 Serbs apostasised to Catholicism. However, many of these returned to Orthodoxy after the war. Hundreds of churches were destroyed or desecrated, and vast amounts of property were confiscated from the Orthodox Serbs. According to German Nazi figures, about 750,000 Orthodox Serbs were killed, including five bishops and 177 other clergy.[9] 200,000 of these perished in the notorious camp of Jasenovac alone in conditions of appalling brutality, 40,000 of them on the orders of the Franciscan Father Filipovich. Bishop Nicholas Velimirovich inscribed these martyrs into the Church calendar for August 31: “The 700,000 who suffered for the Orthodox faith at the hands of the Roman crusaders and Ustashi during the time of the Second World War. These are the New Serbian Martyrs.”[10]

One of those martyred in Jasenovac was an old man called Vukashin. He was standing “in an aura of peace and joy, softly praying to Christ. The executioner was greatly angered by the old man’s peacefulness and saintly composure, and he ordered that he be dragged to the place of execution.

“St. Vukashin was given the usual charge, ‘Accept the Pope or die a most terrible death’.

“The old man signed himself with the honourable Cross and peacefully intoned, ‘Just do your job, my son’.

“The executioner trembled with anger. He brutally slashed off one of the saint’s ears, repeating his charge. The Holy Martyr again peacefully replied, ‘Just continue to do your job, my son.’ And so the irrational persecutor continued: first the other ear, then the nose, and the fingers one by one. Like a new James of Persia, St. Vukashin was ‘pruned as a sacred grapevine of God.’ With each grisly and bloody cut, the noble Vukashin, filled with peace and joy by the Holy Spirit, calmly replied, ‘Just continue to do your job, my son.’

“At length, the vicious torturer gouged out the eyes of the martyr, and the saint once more replied, ‘Just continue to do your job, my son.’ With that, the executioner flew into a rage and slew the holy martyr. Almost immediately, the executioner lost his mind and went completely mad.”[11]

In February, 1942, Dr. Privislav Grisogno, a Croatian Catholic member of the former Yugoslav cabinet, wrote in protest to Archbishop Stepinac: “I am writing to you as a man to a man, as a Christian to a Christian. I have been meaning to do this for months hoping that the dreadful news from Croatia would cease so that I could collect my thoughts and write to you in peace.

“For the last ten months Serbs have been killed and destroyed in Croatia in the most ruthless manner and the value of their property that has been destroyed reaches billions. Blushes of shame and anger cover the faces of every honest Croat.

“The slaughter of Serbs began from the very first day of the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia (Gospic, Gudovan, Bosanska Krajina, etc.) and has continued relentlessly to this very day. The horror is not only in the killing. The killing includes everybody: old men, women and children. With accompanying barbaric torture. These innocent Serbs have been impaled, fire has been lit on their bare chest, they have been roasted alive, burned in their homes and churches while still living, covered with boiling water, then their skin peeled off, salt poured into their wounds, their eyes have been pulled out, their ears, noses and tongues cut off, the priest have had their beards and moustaches torn off from their skulls, their sex organs severed and put into their mouths, they have been tied to trucks and then dragged along the ground, nails have been pressed into their heads, their heads nailed to the floor, they have been thrown alive into wells and over cliffs, and grenades thrown after them, their heads smashed against walls, their backs broken against rocks and tree stumps, and many other horrible tortures were perpetrated, such as normal people can hardly imagine.