On Sunday 13th January, our parish was honoured by the visit of Archpriest Vladimir Vorobyev and his Matushka Olga. They had come to Oxford to visit their now famous quintuplet grand-daughters, born a couple of months ago. Fr Vladimir is the Rector of St Tikhon’s Orthodox University, Moscow, the largest church-based higher educational institution in Russia, and Dean of the Church of St Nicholas in Kuznetsy, one of the few churches in Moscow to remain open without interruption throughout the Soviet Era. He is well known as a preacher and spiritual writer.

After the liturgy, at which he concelebrated, Fr Vladimir was welcomed by Fr Stephen on behalf of the parish and accepted an invitation to lead a session of questions and answers. This proved to be a highly fruitful and edifying experience for all present. Touching on issues as far ranging as living as Orthodox in the secular world, the church and ecumenism and the relationship between church and state in Russia and in Britain, Fr Vladimir impressed everyone with the breadth of his response, his generosity of spirit, his simple yet deep and insightful observations, and the way in which his thoughts were grounded in his long years of service in the church as it struggled to exist under the Soviet regime. We were all struck by the fact that we were listening to a priest who was a direct link with real confessors and new martyrs for the faith, who had worshipped in secret house churches, whose spiritual fathers had often spent many years in prison camps or who had faced daily the threat of arrest and the struggles involved in keeping their churches open in the face of hostile officials.

Father Vladimir ended the session by inviting our parish to visit his in Moscow, a kind and also significant gesture, as both of out parishes share the patronage of the same heavenly protector.