Defrocking — a weapon against dissent

In October 2023, a Moscow Patriarchate court found Archimandrite Cyril Hovorun guilty of “perjury” for celebrating the Divine Liturgy with a bishop of the Ecumenical Patriarchate

By Peter Anderson

Archimandrite Cyril Hovorun at the Gregorian University, Rome, in October 2023. He teaches at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California, USA. He has been defrocked by the Russian Orthodox Church (The photo is from his Facebook page — https://www.facebook.com/hovorun)

On the Russian Federation, the Moscow Patriarchate, headed by Patriarch Kirill, is using a powerful weapon to suppress dissent among its clergy with respect to the war in Ukraine. That weapon is defrocking, or threatening to defrock, clergy. The use of this weapon by the Moscow Patriarchate is most likely encouraged by the Putin administration to eliminate opposition to its actions in Ukraine.

Unlike the Catholic Church, Orthodox believe that a bishop or a synod has the power to erase completely the ordination of a priest and reduce the person to the state that the person had before the ordination. On the other hand, the Catholic Church conclusively decided at the Council of Trent that ordination leaves an indelible mark on the soul which no one, including the Pope, can remove. It is true that in the Catholic Church a priest can be “dismissed from the clerical state.” However, this simply means that the priest is prohibited from saying Mass and performing other sacraments. If the priest violates this prohibition, he still has the power to change bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Our Lord.

Before being defrocked, dissenting Orthodox priests have been subjected to Church trials in Russia. At the trials the priests have not been charged directly with failure to support the Ukrainian war, but rather failure to follow the orders of the bishop or synod. Two examples illustrate this.

In May 2023, Father Ioann Koval, a priest in the Lublino district of Moscow, was found guilty of disobedience by a diocesan court for repeatedly substituting the word “peace” for the word “victory” in the required Russian prayer relating to the Ukrainian war. The prayer had been composed by Patriarch Kirill in September 2022 and made a mandatory prayer for all Orthodox parishes in Russia. The diocesan court ruled that Koval should be defrocked. The rationale of the diocesan court was that Koval had engaged in acts of disobedience by changing the wording of the prayer.

In a second example, a Moscow diocesan court in October 2023 found that Archimandrite Cyril Hovorun was guilty of “perjury” as a result of his celebrating the Divine Liturgy in Kyiv with a bishop of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. The reasoning was that Hovorun had signed a written oath of fidelity when ordained and that he had broken this oath by carrying out the concelebration. Specifically, he had not followed the decision of the Holy Synod of the Moscow Patriarchate, made in October 2018, prohibiting its clergy from serving with clergy of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. The diocesan court concluded that Hovorun should be defrocked; this penalty was carried out on December 29, 2023, when Patriarch Kirill issued the following decree addressed to Archimandrite Cyril Hovorun: “Hereby, on the basis of the decision of the diocesan Church court of the Moscow diocese dated October 31, 2023, you are deposed from the priesthood in connection with violation of the 25th rule of the Holy Apostles.”

Hovorun, who was born in Ukraine in 1974, was a brilliant rising star in the Moscow Patriarchate. However, in 2012 he left Russia to pursue an academic career in the West and has not returned. He has written extensively and has lectured throughout the world. Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, he has probably been the person most often sought in the West for interviews or panel discussions relating to the religious situation in Ukraine. As a Ukrainian, he is very critical of the actions of Russia and the Moscow Patriarchate. There are good reasons to believe that the real motive for the defrocking decision was to punish a very well-known critic.

In my opinion, it is very sad that the Orthodox Church in Russia has become a tool in Putin’s war efforts. The Church produced so many martyrs for the faith during the years of communist persecution and has an incredibly rich spiritual tradition. It is a Church in need of our prayers.