Vassa Larin

Dr. Sr. Vassa (Barbara) Larin (born Varvara Georgievna Larina, , ; December 11, 1970) is an American nun with the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. She is the author of many scholarly articles and a monograph on Byzantine liturgy and theology, and an outspoken public intellectual on current issues of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR), of which she was formerly a member. She is Professor of Practical Theology of the Kyiv Orthodox Theological Academy.

Sister Vassa was a member of the Commission of the Inter-Council Presence of the Russian Orthodox Church: the Commission on Liturgy and Church Art, and the Commission of the Inter-Council Presence of the Russian Orthodox Church: the Commission on Canon Law.

Biography Varvara Georgievna Larina was born to the family of a Russian Orthodox priest in Nyack, New York. Larin graduated from Nyack High School and entered Bryn Mawr College in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, at the age of 16. She left college to enter the Lesna Convent of the ROCOR in Provement, France, at age 19. After ten years in France, she spent two years at the Mount of Olives Convent in Jerusalem. Following a long spiritual and academic novitiate training, involving the study of Greek, Latin, German, Patristic Theology and Church History, Vassa was eventually enrolled by Archbishop Mark (Arndt) of Berlin and Germany to study Orthodox Theology at the Orthodox Institute of LMU Munich, Germany. There she received a master's degree in Orthodox Theology, having written a Master’s Thesis on the “Royal Office” at the beginning of Byzantine Orthros.

From 2006 to 2008, she worked as the Graduate Assistant of expert on Byzantine Liturgy, Professor Robert F. Taft, S.J., at the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome. Taft directed Sr. Vassa’s doctoral dissertation on the Byzantine hierarchal liturgy, which she defended summa cum laude at the Orthodox Institute of LMU Munich in December 2008. A revised version of Larin’s dissertation, titled The Byzantine Hierarchal Divine Liturgy in Arsenij Suxanov’s Proskinitarij, was published in 2010 as volume 286 of the academic series Orientalia Christiana Analecta.

Criticism of the Russian Orthodox Church Larin has been a staunch critic of the Russia Orthodox Church's support of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In March 2022, she called the invasion "evil", and in May signed the Volos Declaration, which declared the concept of "Russian world" as taught by the church as heresy. Larin has since aligned herself with the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

Articles “What is Ritual Im/Purity and Why?” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 52: 3-4 (2008) 275-92.

“The Ecclesiastical Principle of Oikonomia and the ROCOR,” electronically published in Russian original and English translation on the ROCOR’s official website.

Books