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 the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany.
In 2006-2008 she worked as the Graduate Assistant of the renowned 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 the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in December 2008.
Larin’s dissertation, The Byzantine Hierarchal Divine Liturgy in Arsenij Suxanov’s Proskinitarij, was published in 2010 as volume 286 of the academic series Orientalia Christiana Analecta.
[1] Her numerous publications, written in English, Russian, or German, include scholarly studies based on original manuscript-research, as well as articles on controversial topics in contemporary Orthodoxy.