Orthodox Reflections

Elpidophoros with then-U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in New York in Sept. 2020.

Fr. Saša Petrović of St. Nicholas Serbian Orthodox Church in Omaha, Neb., delivered his speech, “Eastern Rite Protestantism: Archbishop Elpidophoros’ Destructive Influence on Orthodoxy in America,” in late August. That title is a mouthful, and so is the speech, which covers the unsavory details of Archbishop Elpidophoros’ reign as the head of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America (GOARCH) since 2019.

Fr. Saša gave his speech by video in his native Serbian tongue to an international conference in Sofia, Bulgaria. The conference, “Blockade Against Aggression Against the Church: Defense of Orthodoxy,” was organized by the International Forum of Orthodox Women and by the Center for Geostrategic Studies of Belgrade. The numerous speakers addressed the plight of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and its implications for Orthodoxy elsewhere as well as other topics.

Archpriest Fr. Saša Petrović of Omaha, Neb.

Although the specific issues that Fr. Saša addresses in his speech are unique to our time, the sentiments that compelled him to speak are common to people of conscience throughout history.

The indomitable American journalist Dorothy Thompson told an audience in 1939: “One cannot exist today as a person — one cannot exist in full consciousness — without having to have a showdown with one’s self, without having to define what it is that one lives by, without being clear in one’s own mind what matters and what does not matter.” St. Athanasius the Great, the fourth-century patriarch of Alexandria, earned the Latin nickname “Athanasius Contra Mundum” — “Athanasius Against the World” — because he denounced the Arian heresy thus: “If the world is against the truth, then I am against the world.”

Now here is Fr. Saša, one of those extremely rare but essential men with chests that we need in a time of crisis. As a solo priest stepping up to critique America’s most well-known Orthodox hierarch, however, Fr. Saša might feel that he too is up against the world. And his boldness may seem strange or shocking to some. The Polish-American writer Czesław Miłosz once described what the truth sounds like to people unaccustomed to hearing it: “In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.”

Fr. Saša is no stranger to firing a rhetorical barrage. I gratefully found his article “Masks Forbidden in Church!” during the depths of the Covid tyranny that I battled in my parish of the time, and it inspired me to find the Serbian parish I now attend.

In his latest offering, Fr. Saša exposes the numerous times that the infamous Elpidophoros has violated Orthodox Christian teaching, which is based on Scripture and Tradition and which was formulated in the Ecumenical Councils and the works of the Holy Fathers centuries ago. The Orthodox Church dutifully and humbly guards “the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3), neither adding to it nor subtracting from it. In Orthodoxy, innovating and “winging it” are explicitly avoided, as is any wannabe papism.

I will cover some highlights of Fr. Saša’s speech. An English translation of the entire speech is found on the website of the Center for Geostrategic Studies.

Fr. Saša starts off by explaining that Orthodox Christianity is “the last barrier” to the neo-feudal Antichrist technocracy that is being methodically implemented through assorted tyrannies and a generous dose of gender-bender ideology.

He explains: “The key fistfight of the globalist cabal is the transgender LGBTQ movement, which is designed to break the Orthodox ethos and destroy the family as the basic cell of human society. This movement aims to destroy every national, ethnic, religious, and even sexual identity, in order to eventually have a formless mass that accepts every kind of tyranny, without the ability to distinguish good from evil. In other words, Satan wants the complete annihilation of the human race, and therefore the destruction of the image of God through which man was created.”

Don’t count out subversion as a weapon. “A much more dangerous threat to Orthodoxy,” Fr. Saša explains, “is posed by those who work from within to break up the Orthodox Church, to destroy the Orthodox ethos and dogmatic and moral teaching. In a word, they are very committed to destroying the Church as a God-human institution.”

Enter stage left: Elpidophoros.

Fr. Saša says that, following the example of his boss, Ecumenical Patriarch (EP) Bartholomew, Elpidophoros “has completely put himself in the service of the powers of darkness aimed at the destruction of the Orthodox Church and the reign of the Antichrist.”

Fr. Saša’s dossier begins with Elpidophoros’ endorsement of perennialism, the heretical idea that “all religions have the fullness of truth that leads them to God, only in different ways.”

Fr. Saša quotes the blatant part of Elpidophoros’ 2021 speech at the International Religious Freedom Summit in Washington, D.C., which has circulated online. The gist of the speech is that the Russian Orthodox Church is bad news. However, the perennialist section provides a perfect example of Elpidophoros’ uncanny ability to fit doublespeak, arrogance, and insult into just a few words. He is a true artiste in this regard, telling the assembly: “When you elevate one religion above all others, it is as if you decide there is only one path leading to the top of the mountain. But the truth is you simply cannot see the myriads of paths that lead to the same destination, because you are surrounded by boulders of prejudice that obscure your view.”

Elpidophoros’ subtext is: Take that, you Orthodox fundamentalists! Primitives! Russkies! Cave dwellers!

Subterfuge, prevarication, and ambiguity are his modus operandi. And he is not above enlisting other clerics to do his dirty work. He sent a Greek bishop and a written benediction to the 2023 “Interfaith Harmony Day,” which took place during the festivities inaugurating America’s largest Hindu temple, in Robbinsville, New Jersey.

The bishop who attended the event, Athenagoras Nazianzos, is the chief secretary of GOARCH’s Holy Eparchial Synod. He read a gushing letter penned by Elpidophoros for the occasion, full of joy, gratitude, oneness, and a bunch of other words. He was especially nice because no Slavs were on site.

GOARCH Bishop Athenagoras has since apologized for his 2023 appearance at an interfaith event in New Jersey.

“In the spirit of love and fellowship, I offer my congratulations and blessings for the success and flourishing of this sacred endeavor,” Athenagoras/Elpidophoros told the assembled Hindus, Muslims, ecumenist Christians, Mormons, Jews, and Buddhists.

Since when is a Hindu temple a “sacred endeavor” for Orthodox Christians? Since never. But the best part of this scandalous event was that a few months afterward, a repentant Athenagoras issued a public apology for his participation. Cross that bishop off the list of errand boys.

Fr. Saša explains: “These profane blasphemies directly contradict the Lord Jesus Christ, Who says in John 14:6: ‘I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.’ . . . Can we imagine one of the Holy Apostles attending the opening ceremony of a pagan temple and saying in his homily that the place is holy?!”

No, we cannot.

Elpidophoros spoke at the 2022 March for Life rally in Washington, D.C., held, as Fr. Saša explains, “against the terrible sin of infanticide, which has become so common not only in America but also in many Orthodox countries.” At this major pro-life event, Elpidophoros bizarrely told the crowd: “Every life is worthy of our prayer and our protection, whether in the womb, or in the world. . . . At the same time, we also affirm our respect for the autonomy of women. It is they who bring forth life into the world. By His incarnation, our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ assumed human nature, through His conception in the womb of the Virgin Mary. She freely chose to bring Him into the world, and God respected her freedom.”

Have you ever, in your livelong days, heard a whiff of a rumor of a notion that Mary, the Most Holy Theotokos (literally, “God-bearer”), and the topic of abortion belong in the same conversation? I’ll take your stunned silence as a “No.” What kind of mind equates Mary’s “Yes” to bear the Christ Child with another woman’s “Yes” to abort her unborn child? Truly sinister. My apologies for sullying a famous Churchill quote: Elpidophoros is an obscenity, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, inside another obscenity.

“In addition to all the scandals committed so far by Archbishop Elpidophoros,” says Fr. Saša, “the culmination of all Satanic Sabbaths is represented by the baptism he performed in a temple on the outskirts of Athens.” That was the Greek Church’s “first openly gay baptism” in 2022, for the daughter and son of a homosexual celebrity couple. (The children were conceived via surrogate mother.) The event photos spread like wildfire across the Internet, as planned. The sadistic and brazen Elpidophoros operates with impunity and rubs your face in it. Is it surprising that he pulled this stunt while also misleading the presiding bishop in Greece about the parents? Neo-papism is as neo-papism does.

After the backlash (frankly, not enough), a petulant Elpidophoros declared, “I baptize children, and I don’t care about the personal life of their parents. I don’t judge people’s lives.” Fr. Saša cites a subsequent interview, where Elpidophoros pontificated: “Our Christian faith teaches that God loves all His children and does not separate them by means of any criteria whatsoever. It is perhaps not well known, but the Church does not deny — and, in the case of an infant, cannot deny — the Holy Sacrament of Baptism to anyone.”

Not so fast, says Fr. Saša: “If we were to be guided by the logic set forth by Archbishop Elpidophoros, then there is no reason why priests should not go door to door and baptize the children of atheists, Muslims, Buddhists, or Satanists. . . . We know that for baptism there must be some preconditions: For adults, faith and repentance, and for children, the godparents [stand-ins for the child] must be exemplary Orthodox Christians.”

The shifty Elpidophoros marches on, mainly because he has friends in high places. In April 2023, in an “historic address” as an “honored guest,” he lectured an audience of spooks at the National Intelligence University in D.C. The GOARCH site says he discussed “the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s granting of autocephaly to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church” [sic] and “the implications of Russia’s distortion of the Orthodox faith in the Ukraine conflict.”

Elpidophoros speaks about “Russia’s Weaponization of Religion in the Ukraine Conflict” at the National Intelligence University. But what about the United States’ weaponization of religion in the region?

That phrase should read, “autocephaly to the schismatic Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU).” There, I fixed it for ya, GOARCH. Oh, by the way, in Orthodoxy, autocephaly cannot be granted unilaterally by any patriarch. See the article “The CIA’s Man in Constantinople.”

Imagine having the gall to rail against the Russian Church while you and your barbarous coterie are trying to destroy the 1,000-year-old canonical Ukrainian Church and replace it with a schismatic counterfeit. Which is what Elpidophoros, Bartholomew, the former Secretary of State (and former CIA Director) Mike Pompeo, and other bigwig orcs are doing, notwithstanding their endless lies and propaganda.

Then-U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo with EP Bartholomew in Istanbul in Nov. 2020.

Meanwhile, Orthodox Christians are tied to wooden posts in neck-deep water while the tide is rising — or just detained, beaten, forced off their property, shot at, and forced underground. America: Click the links to see your taxes at work!

Do Americans realize, or even care, that their government’s destabilization of and warmongering in Ukraine have led to the persecution of Orthodox Christians there? Above, His Eminence Metropolitan Longin of Bancheny after his beating in Jan. 2024, only one example of the crimes being committed against Christians by both commonplace thugs and professional Ukrainian government thugs.

Diogenis Valavanidis of the Center for the Protection of Christian Identity knows. He too spoke at the Bulgarian conference that Fr. Saša addressed. Valavanidis said, “The main reason for the enormous upheavals in the entire Orthodox Church lies in the non-canonical decision of the Constantinople Patriarch Bartholomew I ‘the Barbarian’ to enter the jurisdiction of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church under the Moscow Patriarchate.” The theologian Vassilianna Merheb, another conference speaker, observed that “an attempt is being made to reduce the Church to a completely secular-managed, geo-religious structure.”

Recently, the pranksters Vovan and Lexus stealthily got Pompeo to admit his prominent role in helping to create the schismatic OCU while secretary of state. (Start at minute 14:55.) Impersonating Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine’s former president, the pranksters teased the truth out of Pompeo: He is proud that the schismatic church, set up by key player EP Bartholomew, “has made a difference in the war.” The duo also teased out Pompeo’s neoconservative delusions: There’s no persecution of Orthodox Christians! The war must go on!

I am neither left nor right, and I condemn the Russians for their disgraceful role in the Ukrainian calamity. But let’s be clear: Elpidophoros and Bartholomew serve the U.S. military-industrial complex (MIC). Not even the late, great Smedley Butler, who knew militarism inside and out, would be able to fathom this pair’s treachery against their coreligionists. In 1935, Butler, a highly decorated Marine Corps general, repudiated his long career in a short book, called War Is a Racket. In a magazine piece of the time, Butler admits to having been “a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. . . . Looking back on it, I feel I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three city districts. We Marines operated on three continents.”

Butler’s trenchant critiques apply to all facets of the MIC today, including its religious wing. Elpidophoros and Bartholomew do the bidding of MIC oligarchs and institutions, which are inextricably linked with the U.S. government. You gotta serve somebody, Bob Dylan once observed.

The U.S. government are the globalists. They run about 1,000 military bases around the world. They control the world’s reserve currency, ultimately backed by their military, which is backed by the MIC. They have consolidated power into history’s largest, most invasive empire, over the past 120 years or so, through continuous warfare. Capiche?

What else can we say? Time does not allow to tell of Elpidophoros’ ecumenism, his Holy Communion innovations, his authoritarian push for the deadly Covid vaccines, or his hobnobbing with defrocked clerics, Freemasons, homosexuals, Filioque reciters, BLM agitators, and gender hustlers — all of whom, Fr. Saša patiently explains, “publicly oppose the moral and dogmatic teaching of the Orthodox Church.”

It is Freemasons, provocateurs, and gays all the way down, baby. And when you hit bottom, you land in a filthy heap of worthless paper currencies.

After painstakingly presenting his evidence, Fr. Saša proclaims what every careful observer has been waiting to hear from a clerical authority: “It is clear that Archbishop Elpidophoros is not an Orthodox bishop and leads his entire archdiocese to spiritual destruction, while from within he destroys the already shattered unity of the Orthodox Church.”

As they say in Latin: Q.E.D. The argument is complete. There is no celebrating, however. Grab sackcloth and ashes for yourself and your Orthodox brethren. This is a mess — with more mess to come.

Fr. Saša has sounded the alarm. He has exposed the rap sheet. He has collared the notorious Elpidophoros because no one else did. How many clerics and laymen share Fr. Saša’s observations but remain stubbornly mute and inert and comfortable, even as they witness Elpidophoros’ abject mockery of their Church? Why is Fr. Saša the only cleric bold enough to speak in a manner befitting the circumstances? “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind,” declares 2 Timothy 1:7.

It is time for the “showdown with one’s self” that Dorothy Thompson described, time to decide what really matters. And then it may be time for another showdown.

“The question arises for all local Orthodox Churches: How long will this situation be tolerated?” Fr. Saša asks. “How long will they serve together with the clerics of this quasi-church, anti-Orthodox, political, and secularist group? When will a local or Pan-Orthodox Council be convened to judge heretics and restore the canonical order and unity of Orthodox Christians? And the final question is: Are there any red lines for us Orthodox?”

—Cassandra St. John, an Orthodox Christian