ROAC Metropolitan Valentine under arrest

[Priest Siluan]

April 17, 2009

Urgent Message

As has been reported in recent news stories, the Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church is being sued for possession of 13 churches that it received from local authorities over the past 15-20 years, which were received by us in utterly ruined conditions and carefully renovated and returned to use as churches at our expense. The cases were heard at trial on February 5th by the Vladimir Regional Court of Arbitration. This court ruled against the Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church and ordered the local authorities to confiscate the churches. We were given 30 days to vacate the buildings. Appeals were begun, and recently the Court of Appeals postponed the hearing of these cases until the 24th of April. Believing that the Court of Appeals is prejudiced against us, and in compliance with the court order, our people have been trying to gradually remove our belongings from these churches - vestments, icons, church vessels, books, etc. Two of our deacons were recently detained by the local police, who explained that they had received a request from the Moscow Patriarchate not to allow us to remove our own belongings from these churches. Apparently, they think that they have a right even to those furnishings that we have placed in these churches.

Today, on Orthodox Good Friday, Metropolitan Valentine made a frantic telephone call to Bishop Andrew of Pavlovskoye, who resides in the US, and had time enough to say only that people who came for the service have been arrested for entering the church to serve Holy Week services and none could leave the church nor enter it, before his telephone call was cut off.

We ask all of our people to pray for the deliverance of our FIRST HIERARCH and our faithful from the lawless police, and we ask all men of good will, who value the rights of people everywhere to pray in peace and freedom of conscience, as supposedly guaranteed by the Constitution of the new Russian Federation, to make their concerns known to the authorities both in Russia and in their respective countries.

Bishop Andrew
95 Elm Street
Elmwood Park, NJ 07407 USA
Telephone: (347) 321-4870
Mobile: (551) 580-4965
Fax: (208) 730-7551
Email: bishopandrei@gmail.com

http://www.roacusa.org/news.html

[Pravoslavnik]

Christos Voskrese!

Code: Select all

     My spiritual Father told me many years ago that the Evil One often conspires to undermine the Feast of Feasts.  Notice the timing of this latest Moscow Patriarchate attack against the ROAC.  Do these men have no shame, to commit such an act on Good Friday?  It reminds me of the legal injunction of eviction issued to the nuns at the Convent of Our Lady of Vladimir in San Francisco during Holy Week a few years ago by ROCOR-Laurus/MP Archbishop Kyril (Dmitrieff) and ROCOR-Laurus/MP priest Alexander Lebedev.  Our Lord Jesus Christ was also brought before the Sanhedrin during the feast of the Passover.  Such are the works of darkness.

[Catherine5]

That's helpful to hear.
Did you notice the photo of Metropolitan Valentine where he's standing right in front of a fresco showing a closeup of the tortured Savior with His hands tied? I thought that was breathtaking.
But then it looks like in their Paschal photos, he appears in one?
Was he released, then?
Any news?

[Catherine5]

Not sure where this item best fits in, but as long as we are speaking of the unholy persecution by evil elements of the suffering ROAC Church here, that I would post this shocking appraisal by the enemy press:

A very unkind MP-clone news blog has churned out this self-serving distortion of the recent actions against the ROAC in Suzdal :

" Amongst the many illegitimate, so called "True Orthodox" groups, one that has recently received some publicity in the anti-MP media is a sect calling itself the "Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church" (ROAC) headed by a "Metropolitan" Valentine. Having laid claim to Russian Orthodox church buildings in the Suzdal area, the ROAC recently found itself in trouble after a Russian appeals court ruling against their real estate ambitions.[<---how dare those writers?]

The problem with sects like the ROAC is their claim to be legitimate, albeit seperated[sic], parts of the Russian Orthodox Church when in fact they are without any canonical standing or legitimate hierarchy. In most cases they are individuals who have left the Church of their own volition or sometimes, in the cases of hierarchs, are those that have been previously defrocked or suspended by canonical authorities or illegitimately ordained... Certainly they have no right to claim any connections with the Orthodox Church or its property. Unlike the pluralism of western protestantism, Orthodoxy is founded on the very principles of Church unity, canonical order and apostolic governance and the spurious claims of the ROAC in Suzdal only reinforces the necessity of a vigorous and sustained campaign against sectarianism in Russia. "

[Jean-Serge]

Yes, he was freed the same day after his arrest.