Kiev, May 12, 2025
With persecutors of Orthodoxy: Viktor Yelensky (left), Evstraty Zorya (right). Photos: Facebook
Sr. Vassa (Larin) took a trip to Kiev last week during which she met with representatives of the schismatic “Orthodox Church of Ukraine,” suspended priests who apostatized from the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and persecutors of Orthodoxy in Ukraine.
She also attended Sunday Liturgy at a schismatic parish led by a formerly Orthodox priest.
Sr. Vassa is the host of the Coffee with Sr. Vassa show and a professor of liturgical studies at the Catholic Theological Faculty of the University of Vienna in Austria.
She is also a riassaphore nun of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, which supports the canonical UOC and roundly condemns the schismatic OCU. Sr. Vassa herself was censured by the ROCOR Synod in 2017 after she advised a mother to allow her teenage son to engage in homosexual activity at home and said that if he were to be excommunicated for it, he could be an inspiring example like St. Mary of Egypt, who lived in the desert for years without receiving Holy Communion.
Sr. Vassa documented her time in Kiev in several Facebook posts. First, on May 7, she reports that she “was glad to interview Viktor Yelensky, the head of the State Service of Ukraine for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience.”
With Yelensky. Photo: Facebook
Yelensky openly positions himself as an enemy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, working tirelessly to deprive millions of Ukrainians of the largest religious structure in the country. It was his department that staged an “examination” of the UOC’s canonical status and declared that it still operates as part of the Moscow Patriarchate, which, in the eyes of the Ukrainian state, is the justification for banning the UOC.
Yelensky replaced the former State Service head Elena Bogdan, who was fired for confirming that the UOC has separated from the Moscow Patriarchate and for publicly opposing the persecution of the Church (interestingly, the State Service under Yelensky continues to host online the updated statutes of the canonical UOC which confirm Bogdan’s analysis).
Sr. Vassa writes that most of her questions for Yelensky concerned precisely the law that declared a ban on the UOC, which she positively describes as “protect[ing] against the influence of Ukraine of religious organisations that undermine the national security of the country.”
Giving lectures to OCU students. Photo: Facebook
On May 8 and 9 she gave talks at the schismatic OCU’s Kiev Theological Academy. The first concerned issues of the typicon and contemporary and liturgical practices and in the second she offered an analysis of how the terms “freedom” and “peace” are used in Russian propaganda, in particular to influence Western audiences.
In particular, she thanks Evstraty Zorya for his hospitality. Along with Yelensky, Zorya is one of the main enemies of Orthodoxy in Ukraine. His ministry, largely conducted online, is centered on denouncing the faith of his fellow Ukrainians in the UOC. As one of the main public faces for the OCU, he actively supports both the ban on the Church and the violent seizure of churches. In the fall of 2023, he was part of a propaganda tour throughout the U.S. aimed at convincing politicians that Ukraine is a bulwark of religious freedom.
The Theological Academy also notes that Sr. Vassa was introduced by Fr. Andrei Dudchenko, who is not only a priest of the schismatic “church,” but an apostate from the UOC who was suspended from the priestly ministry in January 2019. The ROCOR nun describes Dudchenko as a friend.
With George Kovalenko. Photo: Facebook
On May 8, Sr. Vassa toured the famous St. Sophia Church in Kiev with the OCU’s George Kovalenko, another suspended formerly canonical priest. He has shown contempt for those in the UOC to whom he once ministered, saying their destroyed churches shouldn’t be rebuilt, so they will feel the pain of war by praying amidst the rubble.
With Prof. Bortnyk. Photo: Facebook
On May 9, she met with Sergei Bortnyk—the only member of the canonical UOC that she reports interacting with. Bortnyk is a professor of the UOC’s Kiev Theological Academy.
As a member of the UOC, he opposes and criticizes the state’s ban on the Church. At times he has spoken about how the state is destroying the UOC and attempting to force it into the OCU, “which remains an extremely politicized structure today,” while at other times, such as an August 2024 article published on Public Orthodoxy, he has spoken about establishing a rapprochement between the two structures through the mediation of the Patriarchate of Constantinople.
Posing with parishioners of an OCU parish on Sunday. Photo: Facebook
Finally, on Sunday, May 11, Sr. Vassa attended not an Orthodox Liturgy of the canonical UOC, but of the schismatic OCU. The service at the Church of All Kievan Saints in the Podol District of Kiev was led by another former UOC priest, Sergei Berezhnoy, who left the Church in 2019. OrthoChristian was unable to find an official notice of his suspension by the UOC hierarchy.
With Sergei Berezhnoy and others at church. Photo: Facebook
Berezhnoy caused waves in November 2023 when footage surfaced of him teaching a girl how to cense and serve as a deacon.
Sr. Vassa’s post does not indicate whether she communed at the schismatic church.
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