Heart and Soul: Moscow vicar returns home

Published: Aug. 11, 2023, 12:30 a.m.

The Rev Malcolm Rogers has been in charge of the most extraordinary church.\u202f St Andrews looks like an ordinary British Victorian church, but amazingly it\u2019s just ten minutes from the heart of power in Russia, the Kremlin. \u202f\u202fHis flock includes local Russian people but also many English speaking ex-pats and members of Moscow's international community. This would have been an unusual posting at any time, but he\u2019s been there during a remarkable period. It included the diplomatic dispute over the Salisbury poisonings, the Football World Cup staged in Russia, the Covid Pandemic and now the war in Ukraine.\u202f It has put him in a sensitive situation at times, but it has also helped him to understand how the world is seen through Russian eyes.