New York, November 21, 2025
Photo: archons.org
Following up on The Hill’s hit piece published on Monday, the Archons, a group of rich and influential laymen dedicated to supporting the politics of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, published their own article on Wednesday, November 19, concerning the meetings between Congressmen and a pan-Orthodox delegation that began this week to discuss the fact of the persecution of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
The Archons’ article, “Archons Question White House Meeting with Russian Orthodox Clergy Who Are Lobbyists for Putin,” uncritically follows the line put forth by The Hill that the concerned American Orthodox Christians are likely Russian intelligence assets, despite the factual errors and general ignorance of Orthodoxy that led to that conclusion.
The Constantinople article begins: “The Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate (AEP) note with dismay and regret that Russian Orthodox clergy who are boosters of Vladimir Putin’s unjust, immoral and monstrous war against Ukraine are meeting this week with White House officials and Congressional leaders in Washington.”
While it may be understandable that Laura Kelly, the author of the piece in The Hill, didn’t understand the pan-Orthodox nature of the delegation, given that she isn’t familiar with Orthodoxy and that her piece was written before the initial Capital Hill meeting, it’s not clear how the Archons, who are very proud of being Greek Orthodox, could claim, even after the exact makeup of the delegation was reported by other sources, that hierarchs, clergy, and laity from the Orthodox Church in America, the Antiochian Patriarchate, the Serbian Orthodox Church, and the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America are “Russian Orthodox clergy.”
The delegation did include clerical representatives of ROCOR, but the Archons should also be aware that this autonomous Church is administratively and financially independent from Moscow and is largely against the war.
The Archons “condemn this deceptive attempt to legitimize Russia’s use of the Orthodox Church as an arm of its aggressive foreign policy,” but this can only be read as an attempt to divert from the actual topic of the meetings—the well-documented persecution of Ukrainian Orthodox Christians that has been condemned by multiple Local Orthodox Churches, the Vatican, the Anglican church, multiple international organizations such as the United Nations, and even the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of the United States of America, headed by Constantinople’s own Archbishop Elpidophoros of the Greek Archdiocese.
Most egregiously, the Archons make multiple claims about relations between the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the schismatic “Orthodox Church of Ukraine” that are, at best, demonstrably false.
According to the article, “When the Ecumenical Patriarch granted autocephaly (independence) to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine on January 6, 2019, a splinter group calling itself the Ukrainian Orthodox Church remained aligned with the Moscow Patriarchate.”
However, the UOC is historically the continuation of the 1,000-year-old Church in Ukraine. In the 20th century it existed as the Ukrainian Exarchate of the Moscow Patriarchate, led for several decades by Philaret Denisenko, and in 1990 was granted complete administrative autonomy by a Patriarchal gramota. Conversely, the OCU was not only given a tomos of autocephaly by Constantinople in 2019 but was created by Constantinople just weeks prior in December 2018. Thus, the UOC long predates and was never part of this new group and thus never “splintered” off of it.
The OCU, on the other hand, is an amalgamation of two previously existing groups that were founded precisely by clerics who splintered off from the Ukrainian Exarchate/UOC in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This fact was recognized by Patriarch Bartholomew himself multiple times in the 1990s and beyond, before he changed his mind in 2018. Moreover, when Constantinople entered into communion with these schismatic groups, it proclaimed that it was restoring their leaders, Philaret Denisenko and Makary Maletich, to their previously held ranks—ranks they had received precisely within the Ukrainian Exarchate/UOC (and the situation with Maletich is even more complicated in that he was only ever a priest in the canonical Church before going into schism, but was “restored” to the episcopate by Constantinople).
Further, the Archons write: “That splinter group, an arm of the Moscow Patriarchate, is now targeting and killing members of the canonical Orthodox Church in Ukraine, targeting civilians in order to sow terror among the population and make them too frightened to join the canonical Orthodox Church of Ukraine.”
This statement reflects, at best, complete alienation from reality, and at worst, utter contempt and disregard for the suffering of the people of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
The Archons do not cite a single example of the UOC carrying out any violence against the OCU, and they cannot, because it is in fact the former that violently attacks the latter on a near daily basis. Over the past few years, the schismatics have carried out the physical seizure of hundreds of churches throughout Ukraine, often resorting to physical violence against hierarchs, clergy, and the faithful—even old women and nuns.
The Archons’ claim is especially heinous given that video footage exists showing the OCU time and again carrying out violence against the UOC. Perhaps the most sensational case was the seizure of the Archangel Michael Cathedral in Cherkasy in October 2024, which was seen throughout the world:
The Archons have continuously sided with those who persecute Orthodox Christians in Ukraine. For example, the group’s annual “human rights award” has been given in recent years to Epiphany Dumenko, the head of the violent OCU, Patriarch Theodoros of Alexandria who initially backed the canonical Church but later betrayed it and entered into communion with the schismatics, and Mike Pompeo who personally participated in the creation of the schismatic group during his time as Secretary of State.
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