MOLDOVA/ EU: Beware of Archbishop Markell Michaescu of the Moldovan Orthodox Church
Moscow’s Holy Diplomacy: How the Kremlin Uses Religion to Undermine Moldova’s EU Path”
By Willy Fautré, director of Human Rights Without Frontiers
HRWF (04.11.2025) – At the OSCE Conference titled “Warsaw Human Dimension Conference” on 6-17 October 2025, Archbishop Markell of the Moldovan Orthodox Church (MOC) accused the Moldovan authorities of disrupting pilgrimages and he also complained of having been prevented from leaving the country on three occasions. This needs to be analyzed in a broader context.
Indeed. Who is Archbishop Markell Michaescu (also written Marchel) of Bălți and Fălești of the Orthodox Church of Moldova? Is he only a religious hierarch?
Archbishop Markell’s lobbying activities
According to Balkan Insight, Archbishop Markell of Baltsy and Falesti is one of the most politically active priests of a Church which has deep ties with Moscow and pro-Russian political circles. He is known for his hardline views about foreigners, other religious confessions and women. He is also one of the most influential priests in the Moldovan Orthodox Church (MOC) – or Metropolis of Chisinau and All Moldova – which is canonically subordinated to the Russian Orthodox Patriarchate.
His international activities clearly show that he has been mandated by the Russian Orthodox Church to achieve a political agenda: the defence of the interests of the Orthodox Churches directly linked to or in communion with the Moscow Patriarchate in Ukraine, Moldova and other European countries.
His activities at the UN as a lobbyist on 23 September 2025 were hailed on the website of Moscow Patriarchate.
Archbishop Markell of the Moldovan Orthodox Church and his religious itinerary
Archbishop Markell is a prominent religious lobbyist used by Moscow to thwart Moldova’s EU membership. He can be seen in any event of internationational institutions such as the UN or the OSCE to implement the political agenda of his masters.
According to the website of the Russian Orthodox Church, Archbishop Markell (Nikolai Vladimirovich Miheescu) was born on 18 August 1959 in the village of Pyrlitsa of the Faleshti district of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Moldova in a family of Moldovan peasants.
He graduated from high school in 1974. In 1974-77 he studied car mechanic. In 1978, he was drafted into the Soviet Army. After demobilization, in 1980, he entered the Ascension Zhabsky Convent as a worker.
In 1981-85 he studied at the Odessa Theological Seminary.
In 1985, he was ordained a deacon and three years later, he was successively elevated to the rank of a hieromonk, a hegumen and an archimandrite.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the independence of Moldova on 2 March 1992, he went on climbing the ladder of the Moldovan Orthodox Church hierarchy.
In 1997, he studied at the Faculty of Law of the branch of the Moscow University of Management and Law in the city of Baltsy (Moldova/ Bessarabia).
In 2003, he studied (in absentia) at the Kyiv Theological Academy, then under the authority of the Russian Orthodox Church.
In 2007, Patriarch Alexy II of the Russian Orthodox Church led the religious service consacrating him Bishop of Balti and Falesti (Moldova).
On 16 May 2021, Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church elevated him to the rank of archbishop in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow.
From 1988 to 2025, he received numerous awards from Russian religious institutions.
In short, he was trained by Moscow to keep Moldova in the bosom of Russia.
‘Pilgrimages’ in Russia, Moscow’s holy diplomacy
On 26 September 2025, one week before the OSCE Conference in Warsaw, Reuters published an article based on interviews of MOC priests invited to one-week ‘pilgrimages’ in Russia.
Apart from visiting holy sites of the Russian Orthodox Church, which supports Putin’s holy war on Ukraine, they were invited to “lectures from theologians and historians that stressed that Russia and former Soviet state Moldova were bound by centuries of tradition and a shared faith and must stick together against a morally corrupt West.”
Quite often, such ‘pilgrimages’ fully financed by Russia were organised before democratic consultations of the Moldovan population (referendum or elections).
According to Father Mihai Bicu, one of the clerics, he and others received debit cards from Russian state lender Promsvyazbank, later loaded with about $1,200 in exchange for campaigning against closer ties between Moldova and the EU, establishing parish Telegram channels to discourage voters from supporting Moldova’s pro-Western government.
Nearly 90 new channels appeared after the pilgrimages, pushing synchronized messages warning that European integration would erode “traditional family values” and threaten religious freedom.
In February 2025, Moldova’s government had already appealed to the country’s clergy to “tell the truth” about the war, saying that Moscow’s military actions had destroyed some 500 places of worship: churches, mosques and synagogues.
More reading
Three hundred Moldovan priests went on a “free pilgrimage” to Russia (The European Times, 2024)
