The John-Henry Westen Show - October 17, 2025


Has RUSSIA Become MORE PRO-LIFE Than The U.S.？!

Topics
pro-life movement and religious values religious demonstration
Hosted by
John-Henry Westen
Mentioned
Jesus Christ Fatima Divyevo Monastery Christian Orthodox Gospel Mary Adam
Russia’s Moral REVIVAL： From Abortion Capital to Pro-Life Nation Is Russia the Future of Christian Europe？

Episode Stats


Length

18 minutes

Words per minute

136.89

Word count

2,515

Sentence count

169

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

10

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, Fr. Fr. Andrei is interviewed by Fr. Alexei Karpov, a priest in the Russian Orthodox Church, who talks about the differences between traditional Catholics and LGBTs, and how they can work together to protect family values.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Our moral constitution is based on our relations with God.
00:00:04.800 The religion is the heart of pro-life movement.
00:00:07.180 If you take out the religion, the heart will stop. 0.91
00:00:11.580 So there is a movement in America and in Europe of pro-lifers.
00:00:18.260 And they say, we have to be open.
00:00:22.800 And so therefore, the movement to protect life, anti-abortion,
00:00:26.860 has to be not religious at all, because then we're excluding all these people.
00:00:32.340 So we have to make it just, you know, about just stopping abortion.
00:00:37.140 And we have to, we can't do LGBT as well. 0.95
00:00:40.440 No, it has to be just an abortion and no religion and nothing else. 0.58
00:00:44.920 So she can have LGBT for life, atheists for life and all this stuff. 0.94
00:00:49.520 What would be your response to that?
00:00:51.840 Small children come to a priest and ask him, why should I be good?
00:00:57.860 My father says I should be moral.
00:01:00.100 My mother says I should be a moral person.
00:01:02.800 What for?
00:01:04.360 And until this small child understands that his father, his heavenly father is good,
00:01:12.640 and he is the son or she is a daughter of heavenly father,
00:01:17.280 that's why we are, we should be good.
00:01:19.380 So our moral, our, the, you know, say our moral constitution is based on our relations with God.
00:01:28.920 So the religion is the heart of pro-life movement.
00:01:31.820 If you take out the religion, the heart will stop and the pro-life will stop the whole world.
00:01:38.140 That's why only the religion can be this heart.
00:01:42.300 And the more religious people come into pro-life, the more lively it will be.
00:01:48.920 And the more people will join because the request for traditional values is great in the world now.
00:01:54.660 And we see like many people from many countries now in this not very simple political situation
00:02:02.700 when Russia is accused of many sins, you know, a lot of people want to come to Russia.
00:02:07.700 And France, in European countries, there are even some lists of waiting for getting Russian visas
00:02:18.860 because they should understand that they will not get the level of life, the economic level be lower.
00:02:25.140 But they still want to come because I don't want my children to see LGBT rights, you know. 1.00
00:02:30.940 They want to live in a country with traditional values.
00:02:33.560 That's what they say, these people say.
00:02:35.600 So I think that's the beginning of the great sunrise of new Christian Orthodox Russia. 0.88
00:02:46.040 And we're asking for our Christian brothers and sisters and the whole world
00:02:51.260 to unite for protection of our family values.
00:02:56.920 And we are ready to work together because we know that we will give our testimony
00:03:04.840 to our Father, how we use this weapon we have, the word, the ability to change the world,
00:03:13.380 which we have, we Christians have.
00:03:15.220 So that's the alliance we should have together because a lot of our foreign friends from America, from Britain,
00:03:23.660 from other countries, we're all the children of our Lord.
00:03:27.780 And when we change our opinions on this situation, where it's easier for us to fight with our enemy,
00:03:37.780 the globalist elites who are not caring about their people, they don't understand what is their people.
00:03:44.540 The people are just separated from them.
00:03:49.520 We have different interests, not national interests, not Christian interests. 0.96
00:03:53.520 So we should locate this enemy and to make our nations bigger, stronger,
00:04:00.940 and with religiously more conscious to protect the innocent.
00:04:09.620 Because God, how Father gives His blessing to those nations who care about the unborn lives,
00:04:16.980 who are caring about multi-children families.
00:04:20.800 This is the blessing for every nation and everybody knows that.
00:04:24.300 So we have nothing to argue about.
00:04:26.620 We should unite for protection of our natural family values.
00:04:30.660 Father, I have a question for you because this is a, it's a perhaps very different concept for you.
00:04:35.460 The Orthodox Church in Russia is very unified on life and on family and on traditional values.
00:04:43.640 The Catholic Church, especially in the last 13 years now, has been divided, very divided on these issues.
00:04:52.440 Except there is a bunch of Catholics who identify as traditional Catholics.
00:05:00.660 Who have none of that LGBT, they're always been the same. 1.00
00:05:07.700 And so there is a natural alliance, at least on that, with traditional Catholics.
00:05:13.140 But there's another thing about traditional Catholics that is really quite extraordinary,
00:05:19.040 especially when it comes to Russia.
00:05:23.840 This refers to Our Lady of Fatima.
00:05:25.680 Now, I don't know if you've ever heard of Our Lady of Fatima or know much about it,
00:05:28.240 but it's a very beautiful thing.
00:05:30.180 It's one of the main reasons why I love to come to Russia and have great hopes for Russia's future.
00:05:36.720 You might have heard already, Our Lady of the Mother of God visited three shepherd children in 1917,
00:05:41.860 and that was photographed in many of the secular papers, even communist papers.
00:05:47.680 The message of Our Lady of the Mother of God to the children was all about Russia.
00:05:53.040 And so since 1917, you could say traditional Catholics of the world have been praying for Russia.
00:06:00.700 It's interesting because it started praying before communism started, and she warned that if Russia is not consecrated to my Immaculate Heart,
00:06:11.420 Russia will spread her errors. 0.95
00:06:14.060 And at that time, everybody wondered what errors.
00:06:16.220 But in light of communism coming to Russia, communism did spread throughout the whole wide world,
00:06:23.980 even though most people don't understand what that is.
00:06:26.940 But also abortion, very soon thereafter, 1920, spread throughout all the world.
00:06:35.100 And so there's a neat thing about Russia and Russia's future,
00:06:38.620 because a lot of people that I've spoken to the last time I was here, and this time even still,
00:06:44.620 there's people who want to leave Russia because they say, oh, there's no hope here for the future.
00:06:48.540 And I was like, wow, I know there's a real hope for Russia's future.
00:06:54.700 Because consecration to Our Lady, consecration to her Immaculate Heart, and you know, consecration means
00:07:03.740 this is like you consecrate your vessels at the Divine Liturgy, as you call it, or the Mass, as we call it.
00:07:10.060 The chalice is consecrated to that. You don't use the chalice for anything.
00:07:13.500 You don't take it home and have tea with it. It's used for this specific special sacred purpose.
00:07:19.820 Russia is consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
00:07:26.940 So in addition to its role, and I hope and pray too that it will lead the world back to sanity on life
00:07:36.540 and on family, because it was the origin of going the wrong way. But in addition to that,
00:07:42.860 my firm belief is that Russia will actually lead the way into honoring Our Lady once again,
00:07:49.740 to giving proper honor due to the Mother of Jesus, because that was the message of Fatima.
00:07:57.180 The whole prayers we're saying are in reparation for the sins, the blasphemies given to the Mother of God.
00:08:06.380 So do you see any of that in Russia? And can you foresee Russia as being an example to the rest
00:08:13.260 of the world in properly honoring the Mother of Jesus?
00:08:17.260 If you only look at the map of the Russian Federation, you will see that the biggest number
00:08:25.020 of churches is devoted to Our Lady. And we feel she's covering Russia. She's caring about us. She is praying to her
00:08:36.860 divine son for our nation. We feel that a lot of martyrs, those people who gave their lives for Christ
00:08:45.900 during the Bolshevik Revolution. Up to now, the numbers are secret. Nobody knows the scale of this number of martyrs,
00:08:56.220 people, of holy people who gave their lives. But it shows how close to Russian heart was the faith
00:09:04.780 in Jesus Christ. And there was a Russian miracle connected with the power of Our Holy Lady. When the
00:09:16.460 Bolsheviks came, there was a miracle of the great, very honored icon of our mother as a mother of the Tsar,
00:09:25.660 of the heavenly Tsar. This icon was given after a dream to a woman and was very widely spread because this
00:09:38.860 icon was miraculous. And a lot of miracles happened after this. And many of the spiritually experienced
00:09:47.260 people in the Russian church, they said that at the time the Tsar has left the heavenly mother of the Tsar,
00:09:57.500 took her power over Russia, the protection of those people who stayed with Christ in Bolshevik Russia. 0.69
00:10:07.580 And you see how a lot of, many of efforts were made to ruin the Church of Christ,
00:10:15.020 the Orthodox Church of Russia. But Soviet Union has disappeared. And the Church is still alive
00:10:23.180 and growing. And that is the answer for this, that it is growing because it is under protection.
00:10:31.340 The Church is under protection of Our Holy Lady, Our Mother Mary. And we feel that in a lot of monasteries
00:10:39.500 and devoted to her, we have special monasteries which are called the, especially devoted to Our Mother
00:10:48.620 Mary, like Divyevo Monastery. And a lot of people from all the world come to this monastery because it's
00:10:54.860 not possible to explain what they feel there. They feel the presence of her. Divyevo is a world famous
00:11:00.940 monastery. And the other, other monasteries have you, if you notice, they have the main cathedral,
00:11:09.660 even in Kremlin. The main cathedral is devoted to Our Holy Lady. Because the first Russian 1.00
00:11:17.820 temple in the world, Orthodox Church in the world, it was built before Russia was baptized,
00:11:22.380 was built in Holy Mount Athos, devoted to Our Holy Lady. And that's why in every, every monastery,
00:11:32.780 the central cathedral devoted to her. That's significant, you know, and we feel her protection.
00:11:39.100 We feel that even a small effort protected by her and supported by her becomes an effort which changes everything.
00:11:48.700 So, last question for your father, and it might be a difficult one, but our Lord prayed,
00:11:56.940 Father, let them be one, even as you and I are one. And he was talking about his followers.
00:12:01.580 There is a big separation still between Christians and those who are sacramental,
00:12:09.980 that have the true presence of our Lord in the Holy Eucharist, that honor Our Lady. And specifically,
00:12:14.940 obviously between Catholics and Orthodox, do you see that being repaired? And how would you see that
00:12:23.980 being repaired? I know, I believe, Our Lord's Prayer will be answered. So that's coming sometime,
00:12:30.380 somewhere. But what's your thought? When the enemy comes, people in the castle become, I would say,
00:12:40.060 more negotiable about the certain things. And the background for us, which is just undiscussable,
00:12:47.580 is the family values. Why? It is very important, because the family is the first church in the world.
00:12:54.460 When Adam and Eve were created by our Heavenly Father, He gave them the school of love.
00:13:02.380 He made a family like a school, as a school of love, because we cannot love being alone.
00:13:10.860 So we were given, when two meet each other, and the third one comes, you know, it's a reflection
00:13:17.900 of the relations among the Holy Trinity. And this is the background, you know. Our Lord said that,
00:13:26.140 you will recognize my pupils, my followers, by love they have among each other.
00:13:34.700 If we have the true love, if we have the true love, every miracle can happen, you know.
00:13:41.020 And the most important thing for us, to be gathered around Christ. No one can be in the center but Him.
00:13:52.220 If we take this as a background for this unity of all Christians, there will be no question, you know.
00:14:00.140 Christ is the center of everything, because He is the door to our Heavenly Father.
00:14:05.980 That's the background. And our Holy Mother helps us to understand this love, to practice this love.
00:14:15.820 And She is the main protector of all those who are still keeping their faith in the world.
00:14:27.260 The most repeated phrase in Scripture is, Do not be afraid.
00:14:31.740 We are called to speak the truth, to proclaim the Gospel, and to live our lives without fear.
00:14:38.060 For the past three years, we've brought this mission to the very heart of the Church.
00:14:43.580 At the Rome Life Forum, you won't just hear truth proclaimed, you'll have the chance to ask your
00:14:49.020 questions directly to the speakers. This is your opportunity to engage, to challenge, and to go deeper
00:14:55.820 into the battles we face today. Fear not. Her Immaculate Heart will triumph.
00:15:03.980 So we just heard there was a massive participation in prayer in Moscow only a couple weeks ago,
00:15:10.060 not covered really by any of the mass media of the world. And yet it was a gathering of the faithful
00:15:17.100 people to pray, to pray for Russia. Tell us about that. What was it?
00:15:23.100 It was the traditional procession with cross and with prayers and with icons of Jesus Christ,
00:15:32.460 which was in Russian Empire long ago. And it was also during the 90s, before this COVID situation,
00:15:46.380 it was also performed, but not so many people. But at this time, when Patriarch called all the
00:15:52.940 Orthodox people to come and to glory the great saints of Moscow, 400,000 people came and they came to pray.
00:16:00.460 They came to glory our God. And I'm very surprised that it was not covered because it was not possible
00:16:06.460 to hide it. Was it like a political demonstration too or no? It was religious, a religious demonstration
00:16:12.300 with prayer from people, prayers for Russia, for the blessing of God to our country. And it was really
00:16:20.140 great. Everybody was inspired. Everybody was happy joining this ceremony. And I think that a lot of
00:16:26.700 authorities did not expect such a big number of people. But I would say it's not much,
00:16:35.820 because there are much more Orthodox people in our country. But we just demonstrated that we are loving,
00:16:45.260 praying, and standing for our sovereignty, for our religious freedom. Because the religious freedom is a
00:16:52.700 basic value for any country, to my mind. Tell us about the flag that they were carrying. What is that flag?
00:17:02.380 This flag is a traditional flag, which was used by our princes and Tsars. In the center of this flag,
00:17:09.580 there is the icon of Jesus Christ, like the Pantokrator in Greek. And this is a traditional flag,
00:17:21.260 which were used also in religious ceremonies, in military marches. And this is the best flag in the world,
00:17:32.860 you know? Because I have nothing to explain. We are serving to God, we are His people. And the best flag
00:17:38.620 I could ever see, I would say. But there were no other flags, only this one. But hundreds, thousands of
00:17:47.420 people came there. That's great. Father, thank you so much. God bless. God bless you. Thank you.
00:17:52.700 And God bless all of you, from Moscow, Russia.
00:17:59.820 Aloha everyone, this is Jason Jones for LifeSide News. We hope you enjoyed this video. For more content
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00:18:17.100 Thanks for watching, and may God bless you.