Weekly Review of Orthodox Church News

A survey of developments in the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Churches worldwide.

13-26 September 2026 (covering two weeks)

1. Top Stories of the Fortnight

1.1 ARMENIA — the Prime Minister’s office publishes a “report” on the Church; the Mother See calls it unconstitutional, uncanonical and illegal; the Catholicos’s trial is postponed again

Three things happened in one week. Together they move the Armenian conflict from the courtroom into an open state-authored programme for the Church.

(a) The report, 24 September 2026. The Public Relations and Information Centre, a state non-commercial organisation within the Prime Minister’s Office, published a document titled «Report on the crisis that has arisen in the Church as a result of the activities of the de facto head of the Armenian Apostolic Holy Church and a number of senior clerics, and on ways of resolving it». According to its covering communiqué, it was prepared “at the instruction of the Prime Minister” and follows from the government’s 2026–2031 programme. It rests “exclusively on open sources”, with “more than 250 references”. It sets out 16 findings (“արձանագրում”). The communiqué lists these among them:

violations of the vow of celibacy, and impunity for breaches of good conduct;
arbitrary prosecutions and defrockings of clergy;
financial opacity and misuse of church property;
ordinations of relatives and “clan-based governance”;
“politicisation of the Holy Altar” and the spread of external influences;
a 27-year failure to convene the National Ecclesiastical Assembly, and the absence of a single constitution;
splits in the diaspora dioceses.

The report proposes a five-step “road map”. It insists that it “does not challenge the Church’s doctrinal foundations, Holy Tradition or canonical order” but documents “violations of those very foundations, in defence of the Church’s identity and autonomy”. It says that renewal “is carried out by the Church itself”, while the state acts within its legislative competence. Press coverage of the text says it raises the removal of the Catholicos and the election of a new one (Armenpress, Armenian; the full text is published by the centre at iprc.am, Armenian; 168.am, Armenian).

What the text itself shows. This review read the opening sections of the 70-plus-page PDF: the table of contents, the summary and findings 01–04. It did not read the roadmap on pp. 70ff. in full. Three points emerge.

The report’s first finding concludes that the Catholicos is “incompatible” with the patriarchal throne “and must vacate it”. It bases this on an allegation that he broke his monastic vow. The report thus calls openly for the removal of the head of a Church. It is more than a critique of how the Church is governed.
Its evidence is overwhelmingly secondary. It relies on press articles from 2013–2026, open letters, social-media posts and statements by clerics, several of them defrocked, and it repeatedly treats the absence of a denial as confirmation (“has never been denied either by the Mother See or by the de facto Catholicos personally”).
Some of its material is institutional. It quotes the Catholicos’s only reply on the subject: accusations against clergy “must be presented to the appropriate instances … there is one instance, the ecclesiastical one”. It also cites the Mother See’s own figures: more than 100 clerics defrocked over 26 years, of whom 38 left at their own request, 27 abandoned their posts, 15 were defrocked on diocesan bishops’ petitions and 21 directly by the Catholicos. The report reads that breakdown as concealing forced resignations.

This review does not repeat the report’s allegations of personal and sexual misconduct against named clerics. None has been tested by any court or church tribunal, and publishing them would give them a weight they do not yet carry.

(b) The Mother See’s reply, the same evening. Holy Etchmiadzin called the “so-called report” “unconstitutional, anti-canonical and illegal in its content and form”. It described the report as compiled “at the waste of state funds” from “accusations and fabrications” published on social media, and as a display of “political score-settling, vindictiveness and condemnable interference in the Church’s internal life”. It repeated the positions taken by the Bishops’ Assembly at St. Pölten, Austria, on 17–19 February 2026, and stated that renewal of the Church “is carried out exclusively by decisions of the Church’s highest canonical bodies” (Yerkir, Armenian; Aysor, Armenian).

(c) The trial. The preliminary hearing on 18 September 2026 did take place. Judge Serzh Rushanyan of the Armavir provincial court sat at the courthouse in Vagharshapat (Ejmiatsin), as the Court of Cassation had directed on 7 September. The Catholicos and the six bishops did not attend and were represented by counsel. The judge adjourned the hearing (168.am, Armenian; a1plus, Armenian). English-language wire summaries give the next session as 30 October and say that the pending motions will be decided then. This review could not confirm that date in an Armenian primary report it was able to open, so the date is attributed to those summaries only (Armenpress, English, background). On 23 September the defence lawyer Ara Zohrabyan said the hearing had been “postponed again” while the Catholicos “is still forbidden to leave his own country”. The defence asked for the prosecution to end and the travel ban to be lifted. It argued that the charge criminalises an act (the defrocking of a bishop) that falls within the Catholicos’s “exclusive canonical authority”, and it called for “independent monitoring” of the trial (Aysor, Armenian).

One hierarch’s own formulation. Bishop Abgar Hovakimyan, Primate of the Armenian Diocese of Canada, wrote from Montreal on 25 September. He accepted that “everyone is equal before the law” and that crimes and financial violations belong in the courts. He then asked: “If you declare that the state does not appoint the Catholicos, why does the government demand the Patriarch’s removal?” He invoked the European Court of Human Rights judgment in Hasan and Chaush v. Bulgaria, and he summed up his position as “the Church is not the state’s enemy, but neither is the state the Church’s superior”. His text also contains personal invective against unnamed clerical opponents, which this review does not repeat (168.am, Armenian; Yerkir, Armenian). Filed here under the mother church; cross-referenced from §4.

Separating the claims. Coverage runs three different claims together, and they need to be kept apart:

(i) Whether the conduct alleged in the report happened. The report asserts it, largely on the strength of press reports and statements that it treats as “undenied”. The Mother See calls it fabrication. No court or church tribunal has ruled on any of the sixteen findings, so they remain the government’s allegations.
(ii) Whether a state body may lawfully author and publish such a document. The Mother See and Bishop Abgar say it may not, under Article 17 of the Constitution and Article 9 ECHR. The government says it acts “within its legislative competence” and does not decide canonical matters. That is a legal question, and at present only the parties have answered it.
(iii) Whether the criminal case is part of the same campaign. The defence and the Mother See say it is. The prosecution’s charge is narrower: obstruction of a court order (the interim measure protecting Bishop Gevorg Saroyan). A court will decide the charge. The characterisation belongs to the parties.

No response from the Prime Minister’s Office to the Mother See’s statement was traced by 26 September.

1.2 RUSSIA — ninety thousand on Nevsky Prospekt, and what the figure does and does not tell us

The Alexander Nevsky procession of 12 September 2026 drew “more than 90,000”, according to MVD spokeswoman Irina Volk. One Fontanka piece gave the number without attribution; Fontanka’s own earlier report, and Kommersant, both attribute it to Volk’s Telegram channel (Fontanka, Russian; Kommersant, Russian). It is a police estimate with no published method. It is not a count.

The procession was the centre of a sequence: in a single fortnight, particles of the newly uncovered relics of St Dimitry Donskoy were taken to Saur-Mogila in occupied Donetsk (8 September), carried at the head of the St Petersburg procession (12 September), and received at Chersonesus in occupied Sevastopol (17 September). The feature (§2.5) and its statistical apparatus (§6.1) place all of this against the best available data. The data show a practising core that is growing inside a nominal majority that is shrinking. Practice is concentrated in Moscow and among the better-off and educated, while identification is highest among the poor and the old. The data also show that the Easter “attendance” series has been counting different things in different places and years.

1.3 UKRAINE — the Supreme Court opens an appeal in the Kyiv Metropolia case; a new liquidation suit against a synodal department; SBU searches at Rivne

Supreme Court, 22 September. The Cassation Administrative Court of the Supreme Court opened appellate proceedings on an appeal by the religious organisation “Holy Dormition Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra (male monastery)” in case No. 855/11/25, the DESS suit to liquidate the Kyiv Metropolia (proceedings A/990/21/26). DESS’s release does not say which ruling of the court below is being appealed. It says only that the monastery “filed an appeal to challenge the decisions of the lower instances” (RISU, Ukrainian). Following the report of 12 September on the adjournment to 30 October: the effect of the cassation appeal on that date has not been announced.
A new first-instance suit, 22 September. The Sixth Administrative Court of Appeal opened case No. 855/12/26, a DESS suit to liquidate the religious organisation “Mission — Synodal Department of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church for Family Affairs”, with a hearing set for 9 October 2026. According to state registry data cited by RISU, the mission is headed by Metropolitan Panteleimon (Povoroznyuk) of Luhansk, whom the Desnianskyi District Court of Chernihiv convicted in absentia on 18 June 2025 and sentenced to eleven years (RISU, Ukrainian; court order published by DESS). This suit is aimed at a synodal department, not at a diocese or a monastery.
SBU searches, 24 September. The SBU carried out “procedural actions” at the residence of Metropolitan Pimen (Voyat) of Rivne and Ostroh. The regional SBU spokeswoman Anna Svintsitska-Savchuk confirmed the actions and declined to comment, citing investigative secrecy. The diocesan legal head Vasyl Nachev replied: “Our position is clear — glory to God, and on earth peace.” The background is a concelebration by the metropolitan, during a pilgrimage, with Archimandrite Vassian (Zmeev), head of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem. Vassian had earlier been expelled from Bulgaria and North Macedonia amid espionage allegations. The Rivne diocese says the metropolitan prayed there “at the request of mothers of fallen Heroes” (Suspilne Rivne, Ukrainian, via RISU, Ukrainian). No charge has been announced.
Pochaiv, 21 September. Metropolitan Onuphry consecrated the Transfiguration Cathedral of the Pochaiv Lavra. It was built in 2013 and holds up to 4,500 people. The consecration fell during the 60-day extension DESS granted on 3 September, which runs to about 2 November (RISU, Ukrainian). Separately, prosecutors say several old icons have gone missing from the Lavra and are preparing a suit (RISU, Ukrainian, headline item, 17 September).

1.4 CONSTANTINOPLE — the Patriarch in Britain; a quiet crisis with Crete defused at the Phanar

On 24 September a delegation of the Holy Provincial Synod of the Church of Crete spent two hours at the Phanar. It was led by Archbishop Eugenios with Metropolitans Gerasimos of Petra and Cherronisos and Prodromos of Rethymno and Avlopotamos. The communiqué records “agreement on faithfully observing the Holy Canons and the Constitutional Charter of the Church of Crete” (Orthodox Times, English). The dispute behind the meeting surfaced in the Cretan press on 11 September. It concerns the island’s Patriarchal and Stavropegial monasteries, which answer directly to the Phanar and not to the local synod, and the Phanar’s recent practice of sending its own representatives to their feasts. Metropolitan Gregory of Ankara was due to preside at the Vosakou Monastery feast on 14 September as the Patriarch’s representative (Exapsalmos, Greek, reproducing Manolis Argyrakis for ekriti.gr). The delegation also included the Regional Governor of Crete, Stavros Arnaoutakis, who is an Archon Exarch of the Patriarchate, and the mayor of Rethymno. Senior lay politicians sitting in an ecclesiastical delegation is itself a measure of how much weight the island placed on the matter. Bartholomew’s visit to Britain is covered at §2.1. The deeper background, as reported by Radio Kriti and ekriti.gr on 10 September: questions over the transferability of bishops remain open after the election of the Metropolitan of Kydonia and the transfer of Metropolitan Irenaios of Lambi to the Phanar’s Metropolis of Moschonisia. The Phanar has ordained the abbots of two large stavropegial monasteries, Tzagarolon and Gouverneto, as auxiliary bishops of the Ecumenical Patriarch. Sources quoted by the station describe Bartholomew as “strongly annoyed with specific hierarchs”. Some Cretan hierarchs are said to fear that “circles, even within the Church of Crete”, are working to erode the island’s semi-autonomous status (ekriti.gr, Greek, an edited compilation of the radio report). The communiqué of 24 September speaks only of agreement. Whether the auxiliary-bishop appointments and the Patriarchal representation at monastic feasts will continue was not stated by either side.

1.5 SINAI — talks stalled; Archbishop Symeon ill in Athens; Jerusalem sends a delegation

Following the report of 5 September on the settlement: according to Dimitris Alexopoulos in Ta Nea, relayed on 23 September, the exchanges that began in early June had produced “a basic axis of agreement” by late July. Disputes over certain agricultural properties remained open after Egypt’s last counter-proposal in early August, and “the agreement was not finalised into a complete and single text”. Talks now have “no specific time horizon”. Archbishop Symeon has been in Athens for several weeks through illness. The monastery is run day to day, as its rules provide, by the council of elders under Fr Nifon. Alexopoulos reports “parallel moves by a few members of the brotherhood” and “interventions by external factors”, some with “political and party references”. A delegation of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem was in Athens in the week before 23 September and may go on to Sinai. A letter from the Holy Community of Mount Athos expressing reservations about any “dual ownership” regime was, according to the same sources, a “disagreeable surprise” to church and government circles (Ekklisia Online, Greek). The Jerusalem Patriarchate, which ordains the Archbishop of Sinai and whose silence had been noted, is now acting, although nothing it has said publicly was traced.

1.6 ANTIOCH AND ROME — John X with Leo XIV; the Aleppo bishops back on the table

Patriarch John X met Pope Leo XIV at the Apostolic Palace on 14 September 2026. According to the accounts published, they discussed Christians in Syria and Lebanon and the case of the Metropolitans of Aleppo, Paul Yazigi and Youhanna Ibrahim, abducted in April 2013, “a case that has remained unanswered for more than a decade”. The Patriarch called for an end to the wars in the region and for equal citizenship for Christians. Meetings with Cardinals Kurt Koch and Claudio Gugerotti were scheduled (SyriacPress, English; SyriacPress, English; Orthodox Times, English). This follows directly from John X’s appeal at Bose on 12 September for “peace in the East”.

1.7 BULGARIA — Patriarch Daniil in Jerusalem; a fourth consecutive suspension for Archimandrite Nikanor

Patriarch Daniil began a visit to the Patriarchate of Jerusalem on 25 September, running to 30 September, at Theophilos III’s invitation. He received the Patriarchate’s highest award, the Order of the Cross of the Holy Sepulchre. A joint Liturgy of the two primates is planned for 27 September, followed by a visit to Jordan that is to include a meeting with King Abdullah II (BNT, Bulgarian; Novini247, Bulgarian). At home, the Sofia Metropolis issued Order No. 153 of 9 September imposing a fourth consecutive 15-day argos (full suspension from priestly functions) on Archimandrite Nikanor (Mishkov) from 12 September. The earlier orders were Nos. 134, 138 and 146, which makes 60 days in all. His defence filed a complaint to the Holy Synod on 12 September. It argues that serial 15-day “immediate” measures under Art. 95(19) of the Statute are being used in place of the disciplinary argos of 15 days to 6 months under Art. 191, which requires a disciplinary process (Hristianstvo.bg, Bulgarian, which publishes the defence’s documents).

2. Eastern Orthodox News

2.1 Ecumenical Patriarchate

The visit to Great Britain, in the week to 21 September. Bartholomew spoke at Oxford on human rights and the Orthodox Church (Orthodox Times, 19 September). He received an honorary Doctor of Divinity from the University of Chichester. He attended a Patriarchal gala in London and visited the Monastery of St John the Baptist at Tolleshunt Knights, Essex, founded by St Sophrony (Sakharov), whose 130th birth anniversary the Romanian Patriarchate marked the same week. On 21 September he was received by King Charles III at Balmoral in a private meeting that, according to the Patriarchate’s press office, ran half an hour beyond schedule. He returned to the Phanar at midnight on 21 September (Orthodox Times, English; Orthodox Times, English; Exapsalmos, Greek).

Crete — see §1.4.

2.2 Patriarchate of Alexandria

The International Commission for Anglican–Orthodox Theological Dialogue concluded its session in Alexandria on 24 September with a closing ceremony in the Throne Room of the Patriarchate, attended by Patriarch Theodoros II and the co-chairs, Metropolitan Athenagoras of Belgium and Bishop Michael Lewis. The 2025 session at St Davids had set the aim of finalising a document on “Mission in the Contemporary World”. The published accounts do not say whether it was adopted, and no communiqué text was traced (Orthodox Times, English).

2.3 Patriarchate of Antioch

See §1.6. The Rome visit is the fortnight’s main Antiochian event.

2.4 Patriarchate of Jerusalem

The Bulgarian Patriarch’s visit (§1.7) is the first by Daniil and brings the highest honour of the Holy Sepulchre to Sofia at a time when Sofia’s relations with Constantinople are about to be tested by Bartholomew’s visit of 16–20 October. The Jerusalem delegation’s involvement over Sinai (§1.5) is noted there.

2.5 Patriarchate of Moscow — FEATURE: “The door and the room”. Orthodox practice in Russia, from Nevsky Prospekt to the village

I. The door: 12 September on Nevsky Prospekt

On 12 September 2026, the 302nd anniversary of the translation of St Alexander Nevsky’s relics, three processions converged on the square before the Alexander Nevsky Lavra under the motto «Вера. Традиции. Единство» (“Faith. Traditions. Unity”). After the Liturgy at the Kazan Cathedral, the main column went down Nevsky Prospekt, which was closed to traffic. At its head were the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God and an ark containing a particle of the newly uncovered relics of St Dimitry Donskoy, brought from Moscow the previous evening. A smaller procession carried Nevsky’s own relics out of the Lavra’s Holy Trinity Cathedral. A water procession came down the Neva on catamarans from the Oreshek fortress at Shlisselburg. After the moleben, the Donskoy ark was available for veneration in the Holy Trinity Cathedral until 20:00 that day only (Fontanka, Russian; Kommersant, Russian; Foma, Russian; Paper, Russian). Paper reported that cadets of the Military Academy of Communications and Rosgvardiya personnel walked in the column, and that State Duma deputy Vitaly Milonov was in its front ranks.

The crowd figure — provenance established. “More than 90,000” is the figure given by the MVD’s official spokeswoman, Irina Volk, on her Telegram channel. Fontanka’s first account and Kommersant both cite her. A later Fontanka feature repeated the number without attribution, and that is the version that circulated. The figure is a police estimate of the size of a moving crowd, and no method has been published. It may include spectators on the pavements as well as marchers, and it treats three processions as one. It says nothing about who, among the 90,000, attends a Liturgy on an ordinary Sunday.

One relic, two deployments. The edition of 12 September reported that a fragment of Donskoy’s right hand had been sent towards the front “to strengthen the soldiers’ spirits”. The fuller itinerary is now public:

the sarcophagus in the Kremlin’s Cathedral of the Archangel was opened by restorers in July;
Patriarch Kirill held a moleben at the relics on 18 August;
President Putin prayed there on 20 August;
particles were placed in several arks;
one ark stood in Christ the Saviour from 7 to 20 September;
another reached Rostov-on-Don on 7 September and on 8 September, the anniversary of the 1943 liberation of the Donbas, was received at the Saur-Mogila memorial complex in occupied Donetsk oblast;
a third headed the St Petersburg procession on 12 September;
another arrived at the St Vladimir Cathedral in Chersonesus, Sevastopol, on 17 September, received by Bishop Nestor of Yalta (Pravoslavie.ru, Russian; SKVK, Russian; dmdonskoy.ru, Russian; Gazeta.ru, Russian, byline Aleksei Pochtaruk).

In the same five days, one set of newly authenticated relics was placed at a war memorial on occupied territory, at the head of a civic devotion in the second capital, and in a cathedral in annexed Crimea. The standing standard for telling devotional relic practice from instrumental deployment looks to what the church body itself says the object is for. On that test the itinerary mixes both. At Saur-Mogila and at the front the stated purpose was martial (“the holy commander”, “the very same right hand with which he wielded his sword”). In St Petersburg the relic travelled beside the Kazan icon under a civic motto of faith, tradition and unity. At Chersonesus it was received with an akathist. Nobody in the Russian Church was traced objecting to the military use of the relic. The Chersonesus reception adds a third register, territorial: the relic of the victor of Kulikovo was presented at the traditional site of Prince Vladimir’s baptism, in a city Russia annexed in 2014. This review reports that register as an observation about the itinerary. It does not attribute it as a stated intention.

II. The room: how many Orthodox, and how many practise

Three measures, three different things. Russian data on Orthodoxy mix three quantities that need to be kept apart:

identification: the share of the population that says “I am Orthodox” when asked in a survey;
declared practice: what respondents say about how often they attend, pray, fast or receive communion;
counted presence: the police or city figures for how many bodies were in churches on the great feasts.

These are measured by different bodies with different standpoints:

Levada Center, designated a “foreign agent” by Russia’s Ministry of Justice. Every page it publishes carries the mandated disclaimer. The designation does not affect the data.
SOVA Center, likewise designated, which compiles the police counts.
VTsIOM, owned by the state.
FOM, which also runs fieldwork for other clients, including the church university below.
St Tikhon’s Orthodox University (PSTGU), a Russian Orthodox Church institution.
The Ministry of the Interior (MVD) and Rosgvardiya, which do the counting.
The Moscow city government.

It is itself a fact about the information environment that two of the most methodologically transparent sources on this question are designated as foreign agents by the state.

1. Identification: a majority that rose, fell, and partly recovered.

Levada (late September–1 October 2025, n = 1,610, face-to-face at home): 73% call themselves Orthodox. The figure rose from the late 1980s to a peak of 80% in 2010, fell to 65% by 2020, and has recovered since. Atheists fell from 70% in December 1989 to 5% in 2025; a further 13% profess no confession (Levada, Russian).
VTsIOM (telephone, mobile-number random sample, n = 1,600, May–June 2025): 67% Orthodox. Kommersant‘s summary traces VTsIOM/FOM/ISPI series from 34% in 1991 to a peak of 76.1% in 2004 and a gradual decline since, apart from a rise in 2022 (Kommersant, Russian; VTsIOM, Russian).
FOM (4–6 April 2025, n = 1,500): 61% Orthodox, with a sharp age gradient: 48% among 18–30s and 69% among over-60s (FOM, Russian).
PSTGU (February–March 2026, n = 1,501, fieldwork by FOM): 65% Orthodox, against 78% in 2011 and 67% in 2020 (Vedomosti, Russian, byline Ekaterina Dorofeeva).

The spread from 61% to 73% within a single year reflects wording (an open question versus a card with options), mode (telephone versus face-to-face) and fieldwork organisation. It is not a real disagreement about the number of Orthodox in Russia. The only defensible statement is that roughly two Russians in three call themselves Orthodox, and the share is lower among the young. The church university’s own series shows the sharpest fall, 78% → 65% in fifteen years.

2. Declared practice: fewer people who attend at all, more who attend regularly.

The Levada release of 24 March 2026 (18–25 February 2026, n = 1,625, all respondents, all religions) gives:

16% attend services at least once a month;
16% several times a year;
7% about once a year;
7% less often;
55% never.

Non-attendance is up 11 points on the previous June and has exceeded attendance “for the first time since 1998”. The attending share ranged from a minimum of 31% (1991) to a maximum of 71% (2020). Levada adds: “At the same time the share of those who attend religious services regularly, rather than from time to time, is growing”, and the monthly share “has been rising since measurements began” (Levada, Russian).

Coverage has split one finding in two. Novaya Gazeta‘s columnist Aleksandr Soldatov built his 3 August analysis, “Копипаства. Почему пустеют храмы и связано ли это со специальной военной операцией”, on the 55% (“churches have emptied”). He does not mention that the regular share is rising (Novaya Gazeta, Russian, classified by the paper as Комментарий). The same release supports both statements, and they are not in tension. The occasional middle is emptying while the regular core is growing. That is polarisation, not simple decline.

Two independent series say the same.

FOM (April 2025) has asked the same five questions since 2000. Among the 63% who call themselves Christians, the share attending monthly or more rose from 6% (2000) through 5–8% (2002–2014) to 13% (2025). These percentages are of the whole sample. Monthly-or-more communion rose from 1% to 3%. “Practically never receive communion” fell from 37% to 34%. On V.F. Chesnokova’s churchedness index, which scores attendance, communion, Scripture reading, prayer and fasting, the “churched” (воцерковлённые) were 11–13% of the Orthodox from 2000 to 2014 and 24% in 2025. The “weakly churched”, who ranged between 16% and 24% from 2000 to 2014, fell to 14%. The “beginners”, between 27% and 32%, fell to 24% (FOM, Russian).
PSTGU (2026): among the Orthodox, 32% never take part in services (28% in 2011; 26% in 2020). 17% take part several times a year or more (28% in 2011; 22% in 2020). 33% visit a church several times a year or more (35%; 38%). The share who have never set foot in a church fell from 18% (2011) to 10% (2026). The PSTGU sociologist Elena Prutskova told Vedomosti that “in society there is a polarisation: there are people who really live a church life, and there are those who associate themselves with the Orthodox faith because it is part of their ethnic identity”. The church’s own information department took a different line. Vakhtang Kipshidze, deputy chairman of the Synodal Department for Church–Society and Media Relations, said that Orthodox identity “remains stably high” and that fluctuations within it “are situational rather than a trend” (Vedomosti, Russian).

A secular designated research centre (Levada), a fieldwork house (FOM) and the church’s own university (PSTGU) independently describe the same structure, and the university’s sociologist uses the same word: polarisation. The church’s information department describes stability. That is its position, and this review attributes it rather than adopting it.

A word on the most generous figure. VTsIOM’s 2025 index classifies 37% of believers as “highly churched”. Its ten “practices” include wearing a cross (53% of believers “regularly”) and celebrating religious holidays (49%). Only 13% of believers “regularly” go to church and 7% regularly take part in sacraments (VTsIOM, Russian). The 37% and the Chesnokova 24% are not measuring the same thing and must not be compared. Much of VTsIOM’s “high churchedness” is made up of identity markers rather than liturgical practice.

3. The inversion. Levada’s two releases run in opposite directions. Identification is highest among women (78%), the over-55s (77%) and the poorest, “those who barely have enough for food” (78%). Attendance at any frequency is highest among Muscovites (61%), managers (51%), those with higher education (48%) and the better-off (46–47%). Non-attendance is highest among students (71%), under-25s (68%), workers (62%), poorer respondents (62%) and residents of cities of 100,000–500,000 (60%). Russian Orthodox identity is a mass, downscale and largely nominal phenomenon, while Orthodox practice is disproportionately metropolitan, educated and better-off. The 90,000 on Nevsky Prospekt are therefore evidence about a metropolis. They are not evidence about the country.

III. Counted presence: a series that changed what it counts

The police and Rosgvardiya publish counts for Christmas and Easter. SOVA Center has compiled them annually since 2010 (SOVA, Easter 2026, Russian).

Christmas, national MVD totals (reported by MVD and compiled in the press):

Year	Attendance
2019	“more than 2.6 million”
2020 (January, before the pandemic)	2.3 million
2023	“more than 1.3 million”
2024	1.4 million (5,900 localities, 10,500 churches)

The 2024 figure is about 1% of the population (Kommersant, Russian; 78.ru, Russian). Counted Christmas presence roughly halved between 2019 and 2023–24 and has not recovered.

Easter, national totals (as compiled by 78.ru from MVD data):

Year	Attendance
2019	4.3 million
2021	1.6 million
2023	2.8 million
2026	no national total published. MVD spokeswoman Irina Volk said only that night services took place in “more than 7,400 localities”

The definitional problem, traced to its source. The task file raised the claim that the Easter methodology was changed “at Patriarch Kirill’s insistence” so that people blessing kulichi and eggs are counted. The claim appears in Soldatov’s Novaya Gazeta piece, without a source. The earliest primary record this review found is a RIA Novosti report of 16 April 2012. It shows:

that year the Moscow police counted about 1.15 million over two days;
the Church said the police figures were too low and conducted its own count: “the number of people who came up to the priest after the Liturgy to kiss the Cross … included those who did not take part in the service but simply came to church on Holy Saturday or at Easter, for example to bless kulichi and eggs” (deacon Aleksandr Volkov, deputy head of the Patriarchal press service);
Vladimir Legoida argued that a true count must begin on Saturday and include “those who came to bless kulichi”;
Kirill himself had said that “never in the whole post-revolutionary history have there been so many people in the churches” (RIA Novosti, Russian).

What is verified, then, is this. Since 2012 the Church has publicly argued for a wider definition, one that counts everyone who comes into the church over the whole Easter weekend, including those who come only to bless food. Moscow’s city government now publishes on that wider definition. Vitaly Suchkov, head of the Department for National Policy and Interregional Relations, reported:

2025: “more than 1.5 million” at 540 churches “over all the festive days”. In the same year Rosgvardiya said it had secured “more than 500,000 parishioners” at the Easter services.
2026: “more than 1.8 million” at 500+ churches. SOVA comments that this “apparently” combines night services, morning services and those blessing food on Saturday (SOVA 2025, Russian; SOVA 2026, Russian).
For 2023, the police figure for Moscow at Easter was 600,000 (78.ru).

What is not verified is that the MVD’s national methodology was changed “at Kirill’s insistence”. No document ordering such a change was found. The regional police releases for 2026 mostly speak of the night services, which is the narrow definition.

So the same city, in the same year, produces a threefold difference between the city government’s figure and Rosgvardiya’s. The published record allows this to be explained only as a difference of definition, not as a difference of fact.

The regional figures, and why their spread is partly an artefact. The table below uses SOVA’s compilation for Easter 2026, set against rounded Rosstat population estimates (approximate):

Region	Counted	Definition	Share of population (approx.)
Moscow city	>1,800,000 at 500+ churches	widest (all festive days, incl. food blessing)	≈14%
Moscow oblast	>170,000 at 230 churches	services	≈2%
Rostov oblast	>125,000 at 453 churches	night services	≈3%
Pskov oblast	20,500 at 126 services	“in the festal night”	≈3.5%
Ryazan	>31,000	night services	≈3%
Chelyabinsk	>25,000 at 185 churches	Easter night	≈0.7%
Saratov	>20,000 at 210 services	Easter night	≈0.8%
Kemerovo (Kuzbass)	>20,000	Easter night	≈0.8%
Kurgan	7,000	night services	≈0.9%
Chuvashia	>23,000	night services	≈2%
Tyumen	>30,000	“night services and festive events”	— (mixed)
Khanty-Mansi AO	50,000	Easter services and the national holiday “Crow Day” combined	unusable
Vladimir, Tambov, Tula, Kaluga, Sevastopol	church counts only	—	no participant figures

The apparent gap between Moscow (≈14%) and the provinces (≈1–3%) is partly real and partly an artefact of counting. Moscow uses the widest definition, while most provinces report a single night on the narrowest one. Some of the gap is almost certainly real, since it matches Levada’s finding that Muscovites attend most. No one can say how much, because the two sides of the comparison count different acts. Khanty-Mansi’s figure is worse still: it merges an Orthodox feast with an unrelated ethnic holiday and cannot be used at all. Before any year-on-year or region-to-region comparison, the first question must be: does each number count the same act? For the series published in 2026 the answer is usually no.

The Church’s own account of its losses. On 24 December 2020, at the Moscow diocesan assembly, Patriarch Kirill said: “even in summer and autumn, that is after the churches reopened to the laity, the number of parishioners at Sunday and festal services fell by a third, and in some places by half.” He named as causes families moving to dachas or home towns while working remotely, and restrictions on pensioners (SOVA, Russian, citing Patriarchia.ru). SOVA’s headline, “fell by half”, overstates what he said, which was “by a third, and in places by half”. He was speaking of Moscow parishes, and a year later he said the decline was continuing there. An institution’s own account of its losses is strong evidence, and it points the same way as the Christmas counts.

Resolving an apparent contradiction. How can Levada’s attendance maximum (71%) fall in 2020, the year the Patriarch reported losses of a third to a half? The two numbers measure different things.

Levada’s figure is the share of respondents who say they attend at any frequency at all, including “less than once a year”. The Levada release does not give the fieldwork month of the 2020 wave.
The Patriarch’s figure is observed Sunday and feast attendance in Moscow churches after reopening.
PSTGU’s pandemic wave shows the same pattern from inside the Church: in 2020 38% of the Orthodox said they visited churches several times a year or more (the series high), and regular communion had tripled. Prutskova links this to “uncertainty and anxiety about health”.

In a crisis, declared religiosity can rise while bodies in pews fall. Surveys capture identity and intention. Counts capture presence. Neither is wrong, but they cannot be reconciled by assuming they measure the same thing.

What the critics say causes the change. Soldatov’s Novaya Gazeta comment offers an explanation, and it should be reported as his. He names:

the pandemic, both the Church’s early instruction to stay away and later deaths among “several bishops, hundreds of priests and tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of laypeople who made up the old parish core”;
the closeness of Church and state, and the preaching of war from the ambo;
prosecutions under Article 148 of the Criminal Code (“insulting the feelings of believers”), which he says create “an impression of ideological diktat from which one wants to protect oneself”;
a generational turnover, as the neophytes of the 1990s age and no new cohort replaces them. He cites the sociologist Zhan Toshchenko‘s fivefold typology of post-Soviet converts.

None of these is tested in the data above. The Levada cross-tabs do show the steepest non-attendance among the young (68% of under-25s) and students (71%), which fits a generational account, but they do not isolate the war. The Church’s position is the opposite. Kipshidze calls the fluctuations “situational”, and Valentina Slobozhnikova, a professor at the Russian State University for the Humanities (RGGU), quoted by Vedomosti, places Russia inside a pan-European decline that began “at the end of the first decade” and notes that practising believers show their religiosity “more actively … in behaviour” under stress, including the war. The data can arbitrate the pattern, which is polarisation. They cannot yet arbitrate the cause.

A counter-argument, stated fairly. In January 2024 Aleksandr Sablin, writing for the St Petersburg outlet 78.ru, part of a holding that belongs to Russia’s National Media Group, argued that the “missing million” at Christmas had moved to television. He cited Mediascope ratings showing a combined Moscow audience for the Christ the Saviour broadcasts “noticeably above half a million” and up by about 70,000 on 2020. He also cited VTsIOM’s rise in monthly attendance from 7% (2012) to 15% (2023) (78.ru, Russian). The two halves of his argument pull against each other. If the core attends more often, that supports polarisation. If the occasional attenders now watch television instead, that concedes the collapse of the middle. Taken together, it is a third description of the same structure.

IV. The countryside: what can and cannot be said

Does the density of practice visible in St Petersburg hold in the countryside? A reliable national rural/urban breakdown of attendance has not been published in the sources examined for 2025–2026. In detail:

Levada weights its sample within four settlement types (large cities, medium cities, small towns, villages), but its press releases publish only the Moscow and 100–500,000 cross-tabulations, and no village figure.
FOM’s April 2025 release publishes the full churchedness series but, in the web version, only an age breakdown. A search-engine summary attributing a “64% Orthodox among rural residents” figure to FOM came from an older FOM page and has not been used.
VTsIOM’s 2025 release publishes a generational breakdown only.
PSTGU’s 2026 survey has not been published in full. Vedomosti reports no settlement breakdown.
The Russian Orthodox Church publishes counts of dioceses, bishops and clergy at its councils. No parish-attendance series was found.

What does exist is qualitative, and it points two ways.

Pavel Abramov and Aleksandr Davydov, Пастыри и постройки. Как устроена жизнь православных приходов (Moscow: Khamovniki / Common Place, 2025), rests on in-depth interviews with priests, disguised under Plutarchan pseudonyms, with fieldwork ending in 2022. It finds that “most rural churches have long been stagnating for objective reasons — the depopulation of the village and the absence of young people“. It also finds that “in small towns and villages communities are often more stable and cohesive; parishioners are more closely bound to the clergy, and the parish forms a strong community around the church”. The book’s three main predictors of a parish’s condition are geography, infrastructure and economic attractiveness. It identifies the 2012 reform, which multiplied dioceses and metropolias, as a source of rector turnover and bishop–parish conflict (VTsIOM review, Russian, reviewer Valery Fedorov, 22 July 2026). The same review opens with an observation that cuts the other way: “At Easter 2026 parishioners in Russian churches saw many new and young faces.”
Soldatov describes the daily Liturgy broadcasts of the Ekaterinburg diocese’s Soyuz channel, drawn “sometimes from provincial, even rural” churches, as showing “as a rule, a few people”. That is a journalist’s observation of broadcasts, not a sample.
Church-building continues in the provinces. In the Ekaterinburg metropolia alone during the fortnight, Metropolitan Evgeny consecrated a lower chapel in the Alexander Nevsky church at Alapaevsk (14 September). He laid the foundation stone of a church dedicated to the “Synaxis of Holy Jurists” on the campus of the Urals State Law University (15 September). He carried out the Great Consecration of the St Nicholas church in the settlement of Krasny Adui (20 September) (Ekaterinburg diocese, Russian; Ekaterinburg diocese, Russian; Ekaterinburg diocese, Russian). These are buildings, not congregations. Abramov and Davydov’s central argument is precisely that the two have come apart.

The published evidence establishes a metropolitan skew in practice (Levada’s Moscow figure). It establishes a trough in mid-sized cities (Levada’s 100–500,000). It establishes a qualitative picture of stagnating rural parishes that are nonetheless cohesive where they survive (Abramov and Davydov). It does not establish the rural attendance rate. The Easter police counts cannot fill the gap, because their definitions vary.

2.6 Ukraine

Besides the items at §1.3:

Termination through a rector’s conviction (the termination-suit logic). A court in the Donetsk region ended the legal existence of a parish of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church because its rector had been convicted of collaboration. This is the Rovenky model: the ground is a conviction under the criminal code, and the parish is given no path to compliance (RISU, Ukrainian, headline item, 17 September). Rovenky itself: the hearing is set for 30 September, just outside this window.
Korets. The Supreme Court opened appellate proceedings on the Korets monastery’s appeal (RISU, Ukrainian, headline item, 24 September; details of the ruling under appeal not established).
Ternopil region. The regional prosecutor’s office says four cases concerning the Ukrainian Orthodox Church are before the courts in the oblast (RISU, Ukrainian, headline item, 18 September).
Bukovina, 24 September. Several thousand faithful of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, led by Archbishop Siluan of Hertsa and Bishop Kleopa of Novoselytsia, walked about 15 km to the Boian convent near Chernivtsi for the feast of its icon, “praying for peace in Ukraine, for our warrior-defenders” (RISU, Ukrainian, citing Religiina Pravda). Popular devotion in the Church’s heartland continues on a large scale while its central institutions are in court. The numbers are the organisers’ own.
Death of Metropolitan Vissarion (Stretovych) of Ovruch and Korosten on 18 September, aged 72 (born 4 December 1953 in Poliana, Korosten district). He was a bishop since 1992 and head of the Ovruch diocese since its creation in 1993 (RISU, Ukrainian, citing the Church’s information centre). His successor will be chosen by a Synod whose own legal status is before the courts.
War damage. Following earlier reports on the Dormition Cathedral of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra: its roof, damaged by shelling in June 2026, is to receive a conservation shelter (RISU, Ukrainian, headline item, 25 September).
Russia at the UN. In his General Assembly speech on 24 September, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov again spoke of “persecution of the canonical Church” in Ukraine (RISU, Ukrainian, headline item, 24 September). This review reports it as the Russian government’s characterisation.
Terminology. RISU and other Ukrainian secular outlets write “УПЦ МП”. The Church calls itself the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (УПЦ), and this review follows the Church’s usage.

2.7 Serbia

Pale, 25–26 September. Patriarch Porfirije travelled to Pale, the wartime seat of the Republika Srpska leadership. There he consecrated the church of the Synaxis of the Holy Archangel Gabriel, close to the faculties of the University of East Sarajevo. The church’s foundations were blessed in 2008 by the late Metropolitan Nikolaj of Dabar-Bosna, and services have been held there since 2015 (Srna, Serbian). It is his first visit to Bosnia and Herzegovina since the Mladić funeral of 7 September. This review records the fact and draws no inference from it.

2.8 Romania

Religion in the school-leaving exam. Under a new syllabus, Orthodox Religion is to be among the subjects of Romania’s 2030 baccalaureate (Basilica.ro, English, 22 September). The same week Greek bishops were preparing interventions on religious education for their October Hierarchy (§2.11).
A saint between two Churches. In a message on the local proclamation of St Magdalena of Malajnica, canonised by the Romanian Synod in July 2025, Patriarch Daniel called her “a bridge between Romanians and Serbs” (Basilica.ro, English, 15 September). Malajnica lies in eastern Serbia, whose Vlach-Romanian population is served by both Churches, so a Romanian canonisation of a saint from Serbian territory touches a real jurisdictional sensitivity.
Romanian-language schooling in Ukraine. A Romanian-language class at Orlivka, Odesa oblast, reopened after Romanian authorities intervened (Basilica.ro, English, 25 September). This is a minority-rights item carried by the Patriarchate’s agency.
The Patriarch marks the 19th anniversary of his enthronement on 30 September.

2.9 Bulgaria

See §1.7 (the Jerusalem visit; Nikanor).

2.10 Church of Greece and Church of Crete

The Standing Holy Synod has asked the metropolitans to send proposals for the agenda of the October 2026 Hierarchy. Several hierarchs are reportedly preparing interventions on the running of metropolises, youth ministry, church education and church–state relations (Vima Orthodoxias, Greek).
Crete — §1.4. Sinai — §1.5.

2.11 Other autocephalous and autonomous Churches

Estonia. Ján Figeľ, president of FOREF Europe and formerly the EU’s first Special Envoy for Freedom of Religion or Belief, published an op-ed on 22 September titled “Estonia’s dispute with the Orthodox Church concerns the whole of Europe”. Its argument: “there is a huge difference between fighting foreign interference and fighting canonical affiliation. The former is the state’s duty. The latter risks making the state a party to a religious dispute.” He says the Supreme Court found the amendments constitutional in June 2026. He also attributes to Interior Minister Lauri Läänemets a public intention to designate the Moscow Patriarchate a terrorist organisation, and discussions with the Pühtitsa convent about a change of jurisdiction. These are Figeľ’s assertions and this review has not independently verified them (Diplomat Magazine, English). FOREF is a religious-freedom advocacy body. The Estonian government’s side is set out in the edition of 12 September. The 28 December deadline is unchanged.
Georgia. An international team is working to save the 1,100-year-old Georgian church of Nuka Sakdari in Turkey from collapse (Basilica.ro, English, 22 September). This is a heritage item, reported by a Romanian church agency.
Moldova. The Metropolis of Bessarabia marked the 34th anniversary of its reactivation with a Te Deum on 14 September, presided over by Metropolitan Antonie. It was a routine anniversary. His election and enthronement were reported on 18 July and 8 August.

3. Oriental Orthodox News

3.1 Armenian Apostolic Church

See §1.1 for the government report, the Mother See’s reply, the 18 September hearing and Bishop Abgar Hovakimyan’s statement. Two further points:

What the report changes. The prosecution concerns one act, the defrocking of Bishop Gevorg Saroyan in defiance of a court’s interim measure. The report is a general indictment of the Church’s governance under the present Catholicos, written by the head of government’s own office, with a roadmap attached. Whatever its merits, it moves the dispute from “a Catholicos accused of a crime” to “a government proposing how the Church should be reformed”. The Mother See’s appeal to the St. Pölten Bishops’ Assembly of February 2026 shows the Church answering as a synodal body, not only through the Catholicos. Divisions among the bishops remain the least-documented dimension. The six co-defendants are established (edition of 12 September). No bishop was traced endorsing the report in the window.
Jerusalem. Armenpress reported on 25 September that a nine-year-old Armenian child was attacked in Jerusalem and that the case was closed without an arrest (Armenpress, Armenian, headline item, 25 September). The circumstances were not established from the text available to this review.

3.2 Coptic Orthodox Church

Following the report of 12 September: Pope Tawadros II‘s visit to the Eparchy of Mallawi, Ansena and Ashmunein (Minya) took place from 15 to 17 September, marking the eparchy’s 50th anniversary. It became the first leg of a seven-day tour of Upper Egypt through the Minya and Beni Suef governorates. It included:

the opening of phase one of the “Kom Maria” shrine on the Holy Family route;
a visit to the school and church of Deir al-Malak at Mallawi;
consecrations and foundation stones for new churches;
stops at the monasteries of Deir al-Barsha, al-Batul, Abba Fam/Avavini (said to date from the 4th century), the Virgin and Archangel monastery at al-Bahnasa, and St Samuel the Confessor at Qalamun.

The tour ended around 21 September in the presence of the governor of Beni Suef (Youm7, Arabic; Youm7, Arabic; Coptic Orthodox Church, Arabic; Vetogate, Arabic). Minya is a governorate with a large Coptic population, where church construction has often been a source of local disputes. A patriarch consecrating new churches there, with a governor present, is the kind of practical signal that the 2016 church-construction law was meant to make routine. The coverage records no incident. Arabic outlets remain the only sources.

4. Orthodox Churches in the Diaspora and Mission Fields

Canada — Armenian. Bishop Abgar Hovakimyan, Primate of the Canadian diocese, intervened in the mother Church’s crisis (§1.1). This is the second diaspora primate in a month to address a crisis at home, after the Bulgarian diocese of the USA, Canada and Australia on Nikanor (edition of 12 September).
United Kingdom — Ecumenical Patriarchate. Bartholomew’s visit (§2.1). The Patriarchate’s visit to its own Archdiocese of Thyateira was also a visit to the British state, at Balmoral, and to the academy, at Oxford and Chichester.
United States — Ukrainian. Representatives of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA, which is under the Ecumenical Patriarchate, took part in a meeting with President Zelensky in New York during the UN General Assembly week (RISU, Ukrainian, headline item, 25 September).

5. Ecumenical and Inter-Orthodox Relations

Anglican–Orthodox: the ICAOTD session in Alexandria, concluded on 24 September (§2.2). Whether “Mission in the Contemporary World” was finalised is not established.
Antioch–Rome: John X and Leo XIV, 14 September (§1.6). Constantinople–Anglican/British: Bartholomew in Oxford and at Balmoral (§2.1).
Inter-Orthodox: Bulgaria–Jerusalem (§1.7). Constantinople–Crete (§1.4). Jerusalem’s involvement over Sinai (§1.5). Romanian–Serbian sensitivity over St Magdalena of Malajnica (§2.9).

6. Trends, Emergent Issues and Debates

6.1 The statistical apparatus of the Russia feature: what each number is

The standing statistical standard asks four questions of every load-bearing figure:

Is it a count, an estimate or a self-declaration?
Who produced it, and from what standpoint?
Is the method published?
Does it measure the same act as the figure it is being compared with?

Figure	Type	Producer (standpoint)	Method published?	What it measures
90,000 on Nevsky Prospekt	police estimate	MVD (state)	No	people in or near a moving procession on one day
73% Orthodox	self-declaration (probability sample)	Levada (designated “foreign agent”)	Yes: n=1,610, face-to-face, ±3.4 pts	identity
67% Orthodox	self-declaration	VTsIOM (state-owned)	Yes: telephone, n=1,600, ±2.5	identity
61% / 65% Orthodox	self-declaration	FOM 2025 / PSTGU 2026 (FOM fieldwork; PSTGU a church university)	FOM yes; PSTGU via press only	identity
16% monthly+; 55% never	declared practice	Levada	Yes	self-reported frequency, all religions
13% (of sample) monthly+	declared practice	FOM	Yes; series since 2000	Christians only, reported as % of whole sample
24% “churched”	composite index of declared practice	FOM (Chesnokova index)	Yes	five practices, scaled
37% “highly churched”	composite index	VTsIOM	Yes	ten practices including wearing a cross — not comparable with the above
1.4 m at Christmas 2024	police count (method not published)	MVD	No	presence on one night, nationally
1.8 m in Moscow, Easter 2026	city figure, widest definition	Moscow government (Suchkov)	No	all visitors over the festal days, incl. food blessing
500,000 in Moscow, Easter 2025	Rosgvardiya figure	Rosgvardiya	No	“parishioners” at services secured
50,000, Khanty-Mansi 2026	conflated	Rosgvardiya	No	Easter plus an unrelated ethnic holiday — unusable
“By a third, in places by half”	institutional admission	Patriarch Kirill, 24 Dec 2020	Diocesan reports (not published)	Moscow Sunday/feast attendance after reopening

Three rules follow.

(i) Identification figures from different houses cannot be compared; only within-house series can. Levada’s 80 → 65 → 73 and PSTGU’s 78 → 67 → 65 are the usable trends.
(ii) Churchedness indices built on different item lists are not the same variable. FOM’s 24% and VTsIOM’s 37% should never share a sentence without that caveat.
(iii) The Easter series is broken as a time series. Moscow’s move to an all-weekend definition, which the Church has advocated since 2012, means that a rising Moscow Easter figure may record a widening definition rather than rising practice. The Christmas series, where no such dispute is recorded, is the better indicator, and it shows a halving since 2019.

The overall pattern — fewer occasional attenders, more regular ones, a shrinking nominal majority, and a practising core concentrated in the capitals and among the educated — is supported by every independent series examined. That includes the Church’s own university. The Church’s information department describes it as stability.

6.2 One relic, three registers

The edition of 12 September contrasted St Spyridon’s provincial tour (devotional) with the Donskoy hand sent to the front (instrumental). This fortnight’s itinerary (§2.5) adds a third register. Relics of the same saint went, in five days, to:

a war memorial on occupied territory (Saur-Mogila, 8 September);
a civic procession in the second capital (St Petersburg, 12 September);
a cathedral in annexed Crimea (Chersonesus, 17 September).

The standard is what the church body itself says the object is for. The Patriarchate’s stated purpose is martial at the front (“to strengthen the soldiers’ spirits”) and devotional in St Petersburg. No purpose was stated for Chersonesus beyond veneration. The territorial reading is this review’s observation about the itinerary, not a claim anyone made. No Russian hierarch or church commentator was traced dissenting from the military use of the relic.

6.3 States writing about churches: three cases that coverage tends to merge

In one fortnight, three governments or their allies acted on Orthodox churches through documents rather than courts.

Armenia’s government published a report alleging misconduct and proposing a reform roadmap (§1.1).
Estonia’s law requires a church to change its statutes and leadership by 28 December. A former EU envoy argues that the law targets canonical affiliation rather than conduct (§2.12).
Ukraine’s DESS seeks liquidation on the ground of affiliation with a Church banned in Ukraine. It has now extended this to a synodal department whose head has been convicted of collaboration (§1.3).

These are three different things.

The Ukrainian and Estonian measures rest on statute and affiliation, in wartime or security contexts, and are being tested in courts.
The Armenian report rests on allegations about personal conduct and internal governance, published by the executive, with no statute or court behind it, while a separate criminal case proceeds on a narrower charge.
The Armenian government is in no dispute about which patriarch the Church belongs to. Its dispute is with who leads the Church.

Coverage that files all three under “state pressure on Orthodoxy” loses the difference. It is the difference between regulating a religious body’s foreign ties and proposing to change its leadership.

6.4 Authority exercised through monasteries: Crete, Sinai and the Synaxis

Two apparently unrelated stories of the fortnight turn on the same institution, the monastery that answers to a distant see rather than to the local bishop.

In Crete, the Phanar’s stavropegial monasteries are where its primacy becomes concrete. The Patriarch sends his own representative to preside at their feasts and raises their abbots to the episcopate as his auxiliaries. The local synod reads this as a slow change to its Constitutional Charter without amendment (§1.4).
At Sinai, the monastery is itself an autonomous Church whose archbishop is consecrated by the Patriarch of Jerusalem. With its archbishop ill in Athens and its settlement with Egypt stalled, it has drawn in, in a single fortnight, a Jerusalem delegation, the Holy Community of Mount Athos, the Archdiocese of Athens and, according to Ta Nea, party-political actors (§1.5).

The two cases run in opposite directions. In Crete a senior see is extending its direct reach into a semi-autonomous Church’s territory. At Sinai a small autonomous body is drawing senior sees and monastic republics into a vacuum. The common thread is the one the Synaxis of 30 November will have to face: the ancient patriarchates exercise much of their authority through stavropegia, dependencies and consecrations rather than through territory. Whether the four “Apostolic Thrones” can agree on anything will depend partly on whether they can agree on who answers for such bodies, a question the Sinai crisis is now posing in practice.

7. New Academic Literature

Levada Center. Посещение религиозных служб в феврале 2026 года [Attendance at religious services in February 2026]. Press release, 24 March 2026. Moscow: Levada Center. https://www.levada.ru/2026/03/24/poseshhenie-religioznyh-sluzhb-v-fevrale-2026-goda/ — No DOI/ISBN. All-Russian face-to-face survey, 18–25 February 2026, n = 1,625, 137 localities in 50 regions, weighted by type of settlement. It gives the first majority of non-attenders since 1998 (55%) and a monthly share (16%) that “has been growing since measurements began”. Levada is designated a “foreign agent” by the Russian Ministry of Justice, and the page carries the mandated disclaimer. In Russian.
Levada Center. Религиозные предпочтения россиян [Religious preferences of Russians]. Press release, 28 October 2025. https://www.levada.ru/2025/10/28/religioznye-predpochteniya-rossiyan/ — No DOI/ISBN. Fieldwork 23 September–1 October 2025, n = 1,610. 73% Orthodox, 6% Muslim, 13% no confession, 5% atheist. The series runs from 1989. Identification is highest among the poor and the old. Designated “foreign agent” (as above). In Russian.
SOVA Center for Information and Analysis. Данные о посетивших пасхальные богослужения в 2026 году [Data on those attending Easter services in 2026]. 14 April 2026. https://www.sova-center.ru/religion/news/how-many/2026/04/d53512/ — No DOI/ISBN. Compiles 27 MVD and Rosgvardiya regional releases with source links. It flags the Moscow city figure’s wide definition and the Khanty-Mansi figure’s conflation with “Crow Day”. It is part of a series running since 2010, the best available time series of counted rather than polled attendance. SOVA is designated a “foreign agent” (disclaimer on page). In Russian.
Фонд «Общественное мнение» (FOM). Русская православная церковь: вероисповедание и воцерковлённость. Индекс воцерковлённости православных верующих [The Russian Orthodox Church: confession and churchedness. Index of churchedness of Orthodox believers]. 18 April 2025. https://fom.ru/posts/15172 — No DOI/ISBN. FOMnibus of 4–6 April 2025, n = 1,500, 97 localities in 51 regions. It gives a 25-year series (2000–2025) of attendance, communion, fasting, prayer and Scripture reading, and V.F. Chesnokova’s churchedness index, whose “churched” category doubled from 11–13% to 24% of the Orthodox. In Russian.
ВЦИОМ (VTsIOM). Религия и общество: мониторинг [Religion and society: monitoring]. Analytical review, 9 June 2025. https://wciom.ru/analytical-reviews/analiticheskii-obzor/religija-i-obshchestvo-monitoring-09062025 — No DOI/ISBN. Telephone survey on a stratified random sample of mobile numbers, n = 1,600. It gives frequencies for ten religious practices among believers and a three-level “churchedness” classification (15/46/37%) that includes identity markers such as wearing a cross, so it is not comparable with FOM’s index. VTsIOM is state-owned (AO “Analytical Centre VTsIOM”). In Russian.
Павел Абрамов and Александр Давыдов (Pavel Abramov and Aleksandr Davydov). Пастыри и постройки. Как устроена жизнь православных приходов [Pastors and buildings: how Orthodox parish life is organised]. Moscow: Khamovniki Foundation for Social Research / Common Place, 2025. — ISBN: trade listings give 978-5-6054628-1-1 (336 pp.). The book’s existence, authorship, title, publisher and year are confirmed by VTsIOM’s review of 22 July 2026 (reviewer Valery Fedorov). It is a qualitative sociology of the parish, based on in-depth interviews with priests under Plutarchan pseudonyms, with fieldwork ending in 2022. Its predictors of parish condition are geography, infrastructure and economic attractiveness. It finds “most rural churches have long been stagnating”. It is the only recent study found that addresses the rural question directly. In Russian.
Giuli Giguashvili (Gori State University). “Religion and Economics: The Economic Views of Catholicos-Patriarch Ilia II of Georgia.” Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe 46, no. 8, Article 12 (online 31 August 2026). DOI 10.55221/2693-2229.2832; ISSN 2693-2229. This is a qualitative, historical reading of the late Patriarch’s epistles and sermons (Ilia II, 1933–2026) on unemployment, migration, agriculture, demography and dependence on imports. It argues that they form part of Georgian socio-economic thought. In English.

This review covers the period 13–26 September 2026.

This text was generated by Claude (Anthropic), Claude Opus 5.5 Medium, on 26 September 2026. It has been slightly edited by Orthodox.News. https://claude.ai