DIOCESE OF EASTERN AMERICA AND NEW YORK: November 5, 2007
An Announcement Concerning the Opening of a Russian School at the Tolstoy Foundation

The children of the late protopriest Seraphim Slobodskoy and matushka Elena Alekseevna Slobodskaya, Tatiana Seraphimovna, Alexei Seraphimovich and Vera Seraphimovna declare that they are categorically against the fact that the recently-opened Russian School at Tolstoy Farms was named in the memory of their parents.

We asked the founders and teachers of this school, who have left the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, not to do this, but they did not choose to honor our request.

In their service to God and people, our parents, father Seraphim and matushka Elena, were always steadfast in following a true course, and they never worked in a destructive way. Everything they founded and created, they did with love, working tirelessly for the welfare of their parish in Nyack. Their work was never self-serving.

Father Seraphim and matushka Elena would never have left the Holy Virgin Protection Church, having built the parish from the ground up, and they would never have left the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia.

The Slobodskoy family wants to inform everyone that the names of our parents were used without our knowledge and without our consent.