Before 2022, Sister Vassa Larin was a familiar face to thousands of Orthodox Christians online. Her YouTube channel, "Coffee with Sister Vassa," offered approachable lessons on saints and holy days, garnished with light humor and delivered from her home in Vienna, Austria. In a tradition where women rarely hold visible leadership roles, Larin stood out as one of the most prominent female intellectuals in Eastern Orthodoxy—a faith community where all clergy and bishops are men. But the world changed in February 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine. And so did Larin’s public ministry.
Larin, who was born in Nyack, New York, to a family of Russian Orthodox refugees, could not stay silent. She publicly condemned the war, criticizing the leadership of Moscow Patriarch Kirill, who had blessed Russia’s military campaign and called the invasion a holy war against a “West that has fallen into Satanism,” as reported by the Associated Press. Larin’s critique was as much theological as it was political: “Patriarch Kirill manipulates religious terms, spiritual concepts to achieve political goals,” she said in a Zoom interview from Vienna. “It’s very cynical and it’s blasphemous. … But the greatest tragedy is that people are dying because of this stuff.”
Her outspokenness quickly drew the ire of her superiors in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR), a body with roots in the Russian émigré community that fled Communist persecution in the early 20th century. Although ROCOR had operated independently during the Soviet era, it reconciled with the Russian Orthodox Church in 2007, accepting the ultimate authority of the Moscow patriarch while retaining some autonomy. Still, as Larin’s story makes clear, that autonomy has its limits.
In January 2025, Bishop Luke Murianka, her new supervisor based in upstate New York, sent Larin an email ordering her to stop all social media and video work and to join a convent—effectively silencing her public voice. According to correspondence Larin shared publicly, the bishop wrote, “It is spiritually harmful for you to live in the world and be occupied with your present social activities.” Larin pushed back, questioning how he could assess her spiritual condition without ever having spoken to her. The bishop repeated his order, and when Larin refused, the matter escalated to the Synod of Bishops in ROCOR.
In May 2025, the Synod ratified her removal from the monastic state, citing “disobedience” but offering no further specifics. Larin, now 54, firmly believes the real reason was her criticism of Patriarch Kirill and her opposition to the war. She has argued that the ROCOR ruling is illegal under church law, and she remains visibly a nun, still wearing her long black veil and cloak. However, her ecclesiastical home has changed: she is now affiliated with the Kyiv-based Orthodox Church of Ukraine, where she has been appointed a visiting professor at the Kyiv Orthodox Theological Academy.
Metropolitan Yevstratiy Zoria, her new supervising bishop, expressed his appreciation for Larin’s “devotion to peacemaking and condemning of Russian warmongering propaganda,” according to email correspondence cited by the Associated Press. Larin’s supporters say her removal marks the first known case of the Moscow church extending punitive action to an American Orthodox person for opposing its pro-war stance. Within Russia, at least 79 Orthodox Christians have faced church sanctions or other persecution for similar dissent, according to a Fordham University study published in May 2025 by its Orthodox Christian Studies Center.
Sergei Chapnin, communications director for the Fordham center and author of the study, noted that the Moscow church has also exerted behind-the-scenes pressure on U.S. Orthodox churches. Larin herself commented, “This is not in Russia. They’re under no obligation in front of any state authority, and they’re supposedly in the free world. But it’s the first case that we have of actual church-sponsored cracking down on an American citizen.”
The divisions within Eastern Orthodoxy have only deepened since the start of the war. The faith, which is the world’s second-largest Christian communion, is united by common creeds and sacraments, but it is split into multiple jurisdictions. The war has aggravated these fissures, with ROCOR and other branches navigating complex relationships with Moscow. ROCOR’s official statements on Ukraine have generally called for peace without specifically condemning Russia, while regularly denouncing Ukraine for moves to ban the Ukrainian Orthodox Church for allegedly failing to sever ties with Moscow.
Larin’s journey to this crossroads began in her childhood, immersed in the Orthodox tradition. Her father was a ROCOR priest, and the family kept a portrait of the last czar in their home. She attended public school but spoke Russian at home, and her social circle revolved around the church. As a teenager during the 1980s, she corresponded with believers in Russia and made trips to encourage the revival of Orthodoxy. She eventually left a full scholarship at a prestigious U.S. college to pursue monastic life, first in a convent in France, then theological studies in Germany, where she earned a doctorate. Larin later became a professor of liturgical studies at the Catholic Theological Faculty of the University of Vienna and served on commissions for the Russian Orthodox Church.
Her online ministry, “Coffee with Sister Vassa,” now boasts about 24,000 subscribers. Most of her videos are short, educational, and sprinkled with humor, making complex theology accessible to laypeople around the world. But her willingness to tackle controversial topics has brought her into conflict with church authorities before. In 2017, ROCOR’s synod rebuked her for advising a mother to be relatively tolerant toward her gay son, but they stopped short of challenging her monastic status. Everything changed after the invasion of Ukraine, when her videos took on a more serious tone, denouncing church leaders who blessed the war or remained silent.
The broader American Orthodox community has not been immune to the turmoil. The Orthodox Church in America (OCA), another self-governing jurisdiction with Russian roots, faced its own controversy when Alaska Archbishop Alexei exchanged warm greetings and gifts with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Anchorage after a 2018 summit with then-U.S. President Donald Trump. Ukrainian-American Orthodox bishops condemned the meeting as a “betrayal of Christian witness.” Alexei later apologized for causing pain, though not for the meeting itself, and his superior clarified that the encounter did not reflect the OCA’s stance. Meanwhile, Putin remains accused of war crimes by the International Criminal Court.
The Rev. Cyril Hovorun, a native of Ukraine and critic of the Russian invasion who was defrocked by Kirill in 2024, sees common threads in Larin’s ouster and the Alaska episode. “It clearly indicates that the Russian Church tries to enhance its ties with the churches that either were connected with Moscow or continue to be connected with Moscow,” Hovorun, now a priest under the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, told the Associated Press. He praised Larin’s courage, saying, “I believe the ROCOR just got rid of the only prophetic voice it had.”
Larin herself remains undeterred. “They do not have the power to redefine good and evil and to call black, white, and white, black,” she said. As the war in Ukraine continues to test the boundaries of faith, conscience, and authority within Orthodoxy, Sister Vassa Larin’s story stands as a testament to the cost—and necessity—of speaking out.
