In September 2025, thirty-eight children from the war-torn Ukrainian city of Sumy arrived at the Tsarnogorsk Monastery of Saints Cosmas and Damian in Bulgaria for what should have been an unremarkable act of Christian charity. Within weeks, the monastery’s former abbot and initiator of this youth camp, Archimandrite Nikanor (Mishkov), found himself suspended from celebrating the Divine Liturgy. The case raises profound questions about humanitarian witness, ecclesiastical authority, and how Orthodox churches navigate their response to suffering amid geopolitical pressures.
A Monastery’s Ministry to War’s Youngest Victims
The Tsarnogorsk Monastery, with its monastic community of eight monks, has hosted children’s summer camps since 2012. But this visit was different. Father Nikanor described the Ukrainian children with striking poignancy: “At first glance, children, like all children—laugh, play, joke. But we can only guess what they carry in their hearts. One of the smallest boys, seeing the cracked paving slabs, asked me whether it was from a bomb.”
“For the first time—and sadly, quite late—we offered shelter to children who have survived the horrors of a real war,” he explained. The monastery welcomed these refugees without precondition, not requiring children to come only from Christian families.
The archimandrite’s announcement on social media was defiant: “I’ve received ‘a well-deserved reward’ for hosting Ukrainian children. We will continue.”
The Official Account: Financial Irregularities
Patriarch Daniel of Bulgaria imposed the suspension following a Diocesan Council meeting, citing Father Nikanor’s failure to maintain proper financial records. The Sofia Metropolis claimed the documentation was inadequate. Was this legitimate governance concern, or an attempt to pressure the monastery indirectly, wrapping ideological reasons in financial accusations?
Father Nikanor contests this on practical grounds. “When I arrived here, there was nothing but an empty field—everything you see today at Tsarnogorsk Monastery was built from scratch. I never received any financial records from the previous abbot, and no one from the Sofia Metropolis ever instructed me to prepare such reports.”
The deeper dispute concerns revenue. Father Nikanor objected to the metropolis’s demands that the monastery contribute money regularly—a sort of “church tax.” “I told them that I was serving in the church, not in the business corporation.”
“Neither Patriarch Maxim nor Patriarch Neophyte made any such demands,” Father Nikanor observed. Never before in Bulgaria have patriarchs been so eager for cash—a practice more prevalent in the Russian Church, which the new patriarch now seeks to introduce. Since Daniel’s election, more than forty clergymen, or ten percent of the diocese, have left for other Bulgarian dioceses for the same reason.
Notably, the accounting irregularities cited do not concern the significant sums spent restoring the monastery from ruins—these were properly audited by state authorities. The complaints concern only modest daily revenues from candle sales and monastery property.
The monastery brotherhood stands entirely with Father Nikanor. “Father Nikanor and I have been serving together for twenty-two years,” said Father Adrian, a monk since 2000. “For thirteen years we have been organizing children’s camps, fulfilling the words of Christ. I am completely bewildered by this punishment. It is both unfounded and uncanonical!”
The Bulgarian public is quite clear about the reasons why Patriarch Daniel decided to sanction Nikanor. They lie in his critical views on the Bulgarian Church’s new positioning in the Orthodox world, and his condemnation of the Russian Church’s role in the Russian occupation of Ukraine. This mirrors the model that Russian Patriarch Kirill implemented, dismissing dozens of clergymen who opposed his public support for Putin. The same model is now being implemented by Serbian Patriarch Porfirije, who initiated legal proceedings against theologians, and now a bishop, who publicly criticized the Serbian Church for supporting Vučić against the students.
The Unspoken Context: Bulgaria, Russia, and Ukraine
“I can’t say there’s a connection between Ukrainian children in our monastery and my suspension—only God knows,” declared Father Nikanor. “But it’s a very unpleasant coincidence. I warned him that this punishment would be extremely unpleasant, that it would cause exactly what it’s causing now.”
The broader ecclesiastical context cannot be ignored. In summer 2024, Patriarch Daniel told Bulgarian National Television that the Bulgarian Orthodox Church does not recognize the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), which received autocephaly from the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 2019. He cited concerns about “violence, church seizures, and the killing of priests,” claiming that “churches transferred to the OCU remain empty”—language echoing positions held by the Russian Orthodox Church.
Bulgaria’s Orthodox Church is among ten local churches declining to recognize the OCU, maintaining communion instead with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church previously under Moscow. This occurs within complex political realities: Bulgaria is a NATO and EU member, yet maintains significant ties with Russia. The Bulgarian Church’s relationship with the Russian Church has traditionally been close, creating tensions as the war forces churches to navigate between humanitarian imperatives and institutional loyalties.
Against this backdrop, a Bulgarian monastery’s decision to host Ukrainian refugee children becomes more than simple charity. It becomes a statement about whose suffering the Church chooses to acknowledge.
Personal relations between Nikanor and Daniel were tense from the beginning. When Daniel, then Metropolitan of Vidin, repeated Russian propaganda and blamed Ukraine for its misfortune, Nikanor publicly distanced himself. Since then, these two have become the faces of two streams in Bulgarian Orthodoxy: the pro-Russian one and the pro-European one, oriented toward the Phanar. Before the patriarchal elections, Nikanor declared that Bulgaria was not a Russian province and did not believe Daniel would be elected. When it happened, Nikanor declared everything was “like in a KGB textbook” and that he would leave the Bulgarian Church. After meeting with Daniel days later, the two reconciled publicly. But in January this year, Nikanor suddenly resigned as abbot and sought to transfer to another diocese. Daniel as patriarch has never visited Nikanor’s monastery, and other priests have been given an oral directive to stay away.
Father Nikanor’s assessment is unambiguous: “I hope for a final divorce from them—both in this world and in the one to come!” His respect for the Patriarch, he stated flatly, “is now gone.”
Questions for Orthodox Witness
This incident invites uncomfortable reflection. If the suspension truly addresses financial mismanagement, it raises questions about supporting monastic leaders in administrative obligations while respecting monastic charisms.
If, however, the Ukrainian children’s visit played any role—whether as primary motivation or as a factor making existing tensions untenable—the implications are more troubling still. It suggests that humanitarian response to war’s victims can be constrained by ecclesiastical politics, and that acts of mercy become suspect when they challenge institutional alignments.
The Orthodox Church confesses a faith proclaiming Christ’s particular concern for children, for the suffering, for those displaced by violence. When a small boy at Tsarnogorsk Monastery mistakes cracked pavement for bomb damage, his question reveals both the trauma he carries and the moral urgency of the Church’s response.
The canonical tradition provides bishops with broad authority over clergy and monasteries to maintain church order. Yet the same tradition insists that episcopal authority must serve the Church’s evangelical mission. When these principles appear to conflict, when institutional loyalty seems to constrain humanitarian witness, the Church faces a crisis not merely of governance but of credibility.
Father Nikanor has announced his intention to continue serving Ukrainian children regardless of consequences. Whether his defiance represents prophetic witness or canonical insubordination depends partly on facts still unclear. But the question his case poses remains, and it will not be silenced by administrative procedures: Will the Church’s response to human suffering be determined by the gospel’s demands, or by geopolitical calculations that increasingly fracture Orthodox unity?
The children from Sumy, laughing and playing in a Bulgarian monastery garden while carrying unspoken trauma, deserve better than to become pawns in ecclesiastical politics. They deserve the Church’s unambiguous compassion. That this should even be controversial reveals how far the Church can drift from its own first principles.
Facebook's Captain Grammar Pants laid down the law this week: "Irregardless is a double negative, and we all know that we can’t not never, no way, no how, use a double negative. You mean 'regardless.' If you use 'irregardless,' regardless of the consequences, you might not get that job interview. Please be aware that certain dictionaries that SHALL REMAIN NAMELESS have given up the fight and now accept 'irregardless' as a synonym of regardless. I do not! Stem the tide of ignorance and use the correct word, regardless!"
This post predictably brought out the peververein in force to chime in and offer additional crotchets. Whinge as you like, but English is, and continues to be, what we, its speakers and writers, collectively make it over time, and we made irregardless a word some time ago, as I posted out in a post five years ago:
Irregardless is too a word; you just don't understand dictionaries
While off for the holiday yesterday, I witnessed a spasm of dictionary panic online, after someone discovered that Merriam-Webster includes irregardless in its dictionaries.
Responses varied: [Gasp] [Clutch pearls] [Recline on chaise longue, applying cold cloths to forehead], accompanied by sentiments such as “Not a word,” “English is Over,” and “The worrrrrld is coming to an end.”
Let’s unpack the misapprehensions crowding together here.
Take “not a word” first. Irregardless is by any measure a word. It has a spelling and a pronunciation. It has a meaning, “regardless.” (Not unusual for English to have more than one word for the same meaning.) It has an etymology, a combination of regardless and irrespective. It has a history, surfacing in the United States circa 1900, with multiple citations since.
When people say that irregardless is “not a word,” then, they can’t mean it literally. What they mean is that it is not a word in use in standard English (which Merriam-Webster points out with the note “nonstandard”).
So we arrive at our second misapprehension, that standard English is the One, True English, all other dialects being inferior, subliterate, nasty. But there is no English Academy (laus Deo) to determine what is “correct” or “proper” English, which is instead the most democratic thing we have. Dialects bobble up against one another, and you get to choose from them whatever suits your purpose.
Let’s look at wicked Merriam-Webster, which had the temerity to include this word. Someone inquired whether any other dictionary does so. I reach over to the shelf adjacent to my desk and find irregardless in the American Heritage Dictionary, the New Oxford American Dictionary, the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, and Webster’s New World College Dictionary. All of them, like Merriam-Webster, label the word as “nonstandard” or “informal.”
And they all have some sort of usage note appended to the entry, of which American Heritage offers the most comprehensive: “Irregardless is a word that many people believe to be correct in formal style, when in fact it is used chiefly in nonstandard speech or casual writing. The word was coined in the United States in the early 1900s, probably from a blend of irrespective and regardless. Many critics have complained that it is a redundancy, the negative prefix ir- duplicating the negativity of the –less suffix. Perhaps its reputation as a blend of ill-fitting parts has caused some to insist that it is a “nonword,” a charge they would not think of leveling at a nonstandard word with a longer history, such as ain’t. It is undoubtedly a word in the broader sense of the language, but it has never been accepted in standard English and is almost always changed by copyeditors to regardless.”
(My copy of American Heritage is the fifth edition, from 2011, and it is already beginning to look a little quaint, with its assumption that there are still copy editors.)
Now we arrive at our final misapprehension: what dictionaries are for and how they operate. Just as there is no English Academy dictating correctness, lexicographers are not the club membership committee, deciding what gets in and what gets blackballed. Inclusion in a dictionary does not amount to an imprimatur. Dictionaries exist to tell you what you might want to know about words, both standard and nonstandard: how they are spelled and pronounced, what they mean, where they came from, who uses them. That’s it.
Yesterday’s online kerfuffle was an echo of the brouhaha from half a century ago, when Webster’s Third came out with neutral rather than judgmental notes and was taken to endorse ain’t. Dwight Macdonald had a major hissy fit in the pages of The New Yorker, and the whole clamor is described in David Skinner’s The Story of Ain’t.
Now, perhaps you could take a deep, cleansing breath.
NEW YORK (AP) — For more than a decade, a Long Island wine importer named Bill DeBlasio has been receiving emails meant for another man with a near-identical name: former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Last week, he decided to respond — inadvertently setting off an international news cycle based on misinformation in the final days of New York City’s mayoral election.
After receiving an email from a reporter with the Times of London asking for his — well, de Blasio’s — thoughts on Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani, DeBlasio replied with a four paragraph critique of the candidate’s agenda, which the real ex-mayor has enthusiastically endorsed.
“I did some research on the proposals and I wrote down my thoughts and used ChatGPT to do a little fine-tuning,” DeBlasio, 59, told The Associated Press. “Then I forgot about it and went on vacation. I never thought it would make it into the news.”
But it did.
In an exclusive story published online Tuesday night, the Times of London reported the former New York City mayor had now concluded that Mamdani’s ambitious agenda “doesn’t hold up under scrutiny.”
De Blasio, the politician, quickly disavowed the piece on social media. Within hours, it was deleted. The Times of London has since apologized, saying in a statement that its reporter had been “misled by an individual claiming to be the former New York mayor.”
DeBlasio, the wine importer — whose identity was first reported Thursday by Semafor — disputes the newspaper’s retelling.
“In no way shape or form did I call myself the mayor,” he said. “The reporter addressed me as Mr. DeBlasio and I answered him as Mr. DeBlasio. They accepted my quote without any vetting — now they’re blaming me?”
“I’ve been Bill DeBlasio for 59 years,” he continued. “My father has been Bill DeBlasio for 85 years. My son has been Bill DeBlasio for 30 years. It’s our name, you know?” (De Blasio, the mayor, is 64, but has had his name for less time: He was born Warren Wilhelm Jr. and later adopted his mother’s maiden name, de Blasio.)
He provided screenshots of the emails confirming the reporter had not specifically addressed his questions to the former mayor.
Still, DeBlasio acknowledged that he hadn’t gone out of his way to correct the misunderstanding: “I said if you have any further questions, speak with my advisers, and I put my friends’ names in there.”
“We all thought it was absolutely hilarious,” he added.
The ex-mayor does not share this view. In an op-ed published in The Nation on Thursday, he blamed the episode on a “hyperpartisan” journalism landscape where “standards of objectivity and decency are decaying week by week.”
A spokesperson for the Times of London said the outlet would not be commenting further on the mix-up.
DeBlasio, of Long Island, meanwhile, said the prank felt like fair payback for years of harassment he has endured as a result of his nominal link to the two-term mayor.
“I’ve had thousands of interactions with people, angry, mean, nasty people just saying the most horrible, horrific things,” he said. “It got to a point where I was getting messages every day telling me how horrible of a human being I am.”
At a New York Mets game years ago, DeBlasio briefly met de Blasio, who offered him an apology for the hate mail, he said.
Describing his own politics as “middle of the road” conservative, DeBlasio said he would likely support Mamdani’s opponent, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, if he were eligible to vote in the city.
“The real Bill DeBlasio endorses Cuomo,” he said. “You can print that.”
Long ago, whispers spread through Takoma DC of a crooked alley where shadows lingered a little too long…
So goes the story of one unassuming alley in Takoma DC that transforms into a Halloween haven known as Spookyville: Haunted Alley. What began nine years ago as a modest gathering inside my home has grown into a beloved community celebration that fills an entire alley block with pumpkins, laughter, and Halloween magic.
Every October, this small, semi-hidden public space behind Van Buren Street NW becomes a glowing corridor of delight and connection. Neighbors turn parking pads into haunted tunnels, driveways into candy trails, and back fences into a Halloween landscape. For one extraordinary night, the alley becomes a car-free, community-powered festival — free and open to all.
This year, with string lights, fog, and civic spirit, this humble stretch of pavement became a pedestrian promenade where kids ran safely, music drifted through the air, and neighbors met, some rekindling connections and some speaking for the first time. For one magical night, the alley embodied what our city’s public spaces can be: vibrant, inclusive, and entirely human-scaled.
Spookyville embraces Halloween as the utlimate urbanist holiday
Halloween is, at its core, a radical act of community building. It’s a night when boundaries blur: between the living and the dead, between private and public, between “my property” and “our block” — when everything is a little bit magical. Children, teens, and adults roam freely. Strangers knock on doors. Sidewalks, alleys, and streets become gathering spaces.
That is the ethos of Spookyville: Haunted Alley. It welcomes us to see what happens when neighbors collectively reimagine shared space. When we take down fences, light up dark corners, and invite one another in, we do more than celebrate a holiday. We claim public space for people, rebuild social fabric, and spark joy.
Together, we turn a simple back lane into something extraordinary: an act of joy, generosity, and community spirit. Urbanists often talk about “placemaking.” Spookyville might be better described as “placehaunting”: reanimating a forgotten space through imagination and care.
A unicorn comes to Spookyville. Image by Planet 16 Photography: Damien Hubert used with permission.
The making of a Haunted Alley
The story of Spookyville began with a spark of neighborhood imagination. As legend has it, the “Mayor of Spookyville” (yours truly) conjured the Alley into being with the help of Laurence “The Fearless Planner” Minor and the ever-enchanting Madame J, fortune-teller by lantern light. Together, we transformed an ordinary alley into a place of mystery, mischief, and shared magic.
This year’s event, held on Friday, October 24, welcomed several hundred neighbors — around 500 to 600 families, friends, and curious passersby — for a night of community and creativity. We offered a Freaky Fish Fry with 150 free meals from Takoma Station Tavern, sweet treats, hauntingly good beats from local DJ Zach Pleasant, and a cauldron’s worth of activities — all conjured through community donations and volunteer magic.
Takoma Station Tavern fed Spookyville. Image by Planet 16 Photography: Damien Hubert used with permission.
Together, we created a night of frights and delights. More than a dozen local businesses contributed food, prizes, and supplies, while neighbors lent everything from power cords to fog machines. Every pumpkin, cobweb, and lantern reflected the collective spirit that makes Spookyville shine.
Spookyville is 100% community-powered and funded — proof that a strong sense of place doesn’t require a large budget, just imagination, generosity, and teamwork.
Spookyville is full of frights and delights. Image by Planet 16 Photography: Damien Hubert used with permission.
From driveway to destination, the real treat is connection
That’s the secret to Spookyville’s magic. It’s not the props or the ghosts, but the people. Every flickering candle and strand of cobweb reflects neighbors pitching in. A sampling of the magical people:
The friend who organized the No Tricks, Just Treats! baking contest, judged by James Beard Award-nominated pastry chef Pichet Ong;Cornelia Poku, content creator and food writer at The 51st; and Ward 4 Councilmember Janeese Lewis George and her family
Girl Scout Troop 42219 and People’s Book leading Campfire Scary Stories & S’mores
One set of neighbors creating the Ghostly Chalkscape along the alley roadway
Other neighbors transforming a parking pad into a Terrifying Tunnel
Merry Pin and a neighbor leading potion and talisman-making crafts
Madame J telling fortunes by lantern light.
The magic begins even before the big night, with neighbors donating and picking up costumes at a neighbor’s Spooktique, sweeping and raking during the Broomsticks & Branches Cleanup, and carving pumpkins at Fright Lights, with their glowing jack-o’-lantern creations set out to guide visitors through the Haunted Alley. Teens and students help decorate, families open their yards, and neighbors share food, power cords, and the work of making something beautiful together.
The result? Civic engagement costumed as play and a neighborhood that’s a little stronger, and a little spookier, because of it.
Looking ahead: A decade of Spookyville
Next year will mark Spookyville’s 10th anniversary on Friday, October 30, 2026, a milestone that will bring even more frights, fun, and community pride. Organizers are already conjuring ideas for new attractions and partnerships; reach out if you want to participate!
But the heart of Spookyville will remain the same: a joyful invitation to come outside, connect, and remember that community is the real magic. Because when we reclaim public space for people — and a little Halloween spirit — we remember what makes neighborhoods like Takoma DC special: the warmth we bring in opening our doors, sharing our stories, and building something beautiful together.
If you find yourself in Takoma DC next October, follow the glow. You’ll find a small alley transformed. It’s a reminder that public space belongs to all of us, and that sometimes, the most lasting community plans start with a jack-o’-lantern and a little imagination.
Top image: The ninth annual Spookyville: Haunted Alley on October 24. Image by Planet 16 Photography: Damien Hubert used with permission.
I heard this metaphor growing up, and in my case, it backfired supremely, because I went out into my neighbor’s backyard where a rose bush was growing, and the one I tested had like 30 petals (it was yellow, but definitely a rose of some kind), and as a very logical lass, I came to the conclusion that you could have premarital sex AT LEAST ten times before your future husband would even notice something was up. Moral of the story? Test your metaphors on the weirdest and most neurodivergent child you know before writing your weird religious propaganda.
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