Vol. 55, Nos. 1–2 (324–325) January–April, 2019

Chosen by God for His People

Metropolitan Onuphry of Kiev and All Ukraine

by Nun Cornelia (Rees)

This double issue of The Orthodox Word features an article by Nun Cornelia (Rees), editor of the well-known OrthoChristian.com website, on the current metropolitan of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, His Eminence Onuphry (Berezovsky). Ukraine has been torn by political strife, especially since the overthrow of the lawfully elected government in 2014. Additionally, the country has been in the throes of a religious conflict, made far worse by the uncanonical granting of autocephaly to schismatics by the Patriarchate of Constantinople in 2019. In the midst of these ongoing crises, Metropolitan Onuphry has been a truly Christian man of peace, an embodiment of the Gospel teachings, and a beacon of hope for his embattled flock. The article details his life and the situation he is facing, and contains a selection of his teachings.

Also featured in this issue is an article from the second edition of Genesis, Creation, and Early Man, by Hieromonk Seraphim Rose, which will soon be published in a digital edition and a third print edition. The article, “Modern Saints and Elders on Evolutionism,” provides teachings and commentaries by holy men of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries on the inadmissibility of Darwin’s theory of evolution for Orthodox Christians, and the incompatibility of this false theory with revealed Truth.

The issue concludes with the eighth installment of the English translation of letters of St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, followed by a book review of an outstanding new volume on Tsar-martyr Nicholas II of Russia and his family: The Romanov Royal Martyrs: What Silence Could Not Conceal, published by the St. John the Forerunner Monastery on Cyprus.