(10 Sep 2025)
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ASSOCIATED PRESS
Vienna – 3 September 2025
1. Sister Vassa Larin recording a YouTube video
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Sister Vassa Larin, Orthodox nun:
"I am part of the Orthodox Church, and specifically I am under a bishop of the orthodox church of Ukraine nowadays, because the church that I was born into, of which my father was a priest also, this church jurisdiction actually made it impossible for me to remain just recently because first the synod of this church tried to silence me, to forbid me to do any internet activity that I’ve been doing for well over 10 years."
3. Larin lighting a candle
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Sister Vassa Larin, Orthodox nun:
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"I wasn’t seeking to leave this church of my upbringing into which I was born. I wasn’t telling anybody to leave it, nor was I planning to leave, but it became impossible for me to exist, to be at all me. I do not get bullied by a church authority that has a problem with me stating my position as far as the Russian Church’s not orthodox teaching or heretical teaching in my point of view about this war against Ukraine being a holy war."
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STORYLINE:
Before 2022, Sister Vassa Larin was best known as an Orthodox nun who taught thousands on YouTube about saints and holy days. She became one of the most prominent female intellectuals in Orthodoxy — widely respected within the highly patriarchal religion where all clergy and bishops are male.
Then Russia invaded Ukraine. Larin publicly opposed it.
Eventually her bishop revoked her status as a nun.
He had essentially sought to silence her, ordering her to cease her media work, Larin said. When she balked, he removed her as a nun. That decision was ratified in May by the Synod of Bishops in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, a jurisdiction within Eastern Orthodoxy known as ROCOR.
The official reason the bishops gave was “disobedience” — with no specifics.
But Larin has no doubt the real reason was her outspoken criticism of Moscow Patriarch Kirill, who has blessed Russia’s war effort, and others who have gone along with him.
Kirill has ultimate oversight over the New York-based ROCOR.
Compelled to speak out, Larin and her supporters say it’s the first known case of the Moscow church extending its punitive reach to an American Orthodox person who opposes its pro-war stance. Dozens of dissenting Orthodox priests within Russia have already faced censure, according to a Fordham University study.
ROCOR officials did not reply to multiple requests for comment made via email and telephone over two weeks.
Larin maintains the ROCOR ruling removing her from the monastic state is illegal under church law.
As her long black veil and cloak indicate, she remains a nun but is now affiliated with a different jurisdiction — the Kyiv-based Orthodox Church of Ukraine. She has been appointed a visiting professor of the Kyiv Orthodox Theological Academy.
Her new supervising bishop, Metropolitan Yevstratiy Zoria, said by email that he appreciates Larin’s “devotion to peacemaking and condemning of Russian warmongering propaganda.”
Eastern Orthodoxy, the world’s second-largest Christian communion, is the majority religion in Russia and Ukraine. It is united by common creeds, sacraments and a belief that its bishops are direct successors to Jesus’ apostles.
But Orthodoxy has multiple jurisdictions, and the war has aggravated divisions.
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