Synodal Issues > Sister Churches > Russian Orthodox Church Abroad

Russian Orthodox Church Abroad

 

• After the atheistic (Bolshevik) Revolution of 1917 in Russia, one part of the Russian Orthodox Church left the country and was dispersed to almost every continent of the globe, organized, with the Russian Patriarch's blessing, as an autonomous ecclesiastical jurisdiction with a synodal hierarchy, clergy, monastics, and a large flock of faithful.

• The thus separated "Russian Orthodox Church Abroad" always constituted a witness to Orthodoxy (correct belief) and Orthopraxy (correct observance of the Faith), and especially through its many Holy Hierarchs and other of its outstanding members. It fervently supported the Church Calendar of the Fathers and resisted the twentieth-century innovations in the Orthodox Church, as well as the heresy of ecumenism, which it also condemned by Synodal decree in 1983, under the administration of its late First Hierarch, the Holy Confessor Metropolitan Philaret (+ 1985).

• From this Church of the Russians in Diaspora, the Orthodox Church of the anti-ecumenists following the Patristic Church Calendar in Greece received, in 1960 and 1962, its episcopal Consecrations.

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• After the union of the greater part of the Russian Church Abroad, under Metropolitan Laurus, with the Moscow Patriarchate (May 4/17, 2007), without an Orthodox resolution of their differences in matters of Faith, His Eminence, Bishop Agafangel of Odessa and Tauris, not accepting this union, was appointed head of the "Temporary Supreme Ecclesiastical Administration" of the remnant of the Clergy and flock of the Church Abroad remaining faithful to an Orthodox confession of the Faith, thus perpetuating the glorious historical course of the Church Abroad.

• This ecclesiastical jurisdiction numbers about eighty parishes worldwide, with nearly seventy clergy in Ukraine, North and South America, in areas of the former Soviet Union, and in various other parts of the world.

Headquarters: Odessa, Ukraine

- Postal address: The Most Reverend Agafangel

- Michailovskaya 1, Odessa 65005, Ukraine

- Tel. no.: 0038 048 7320801, 7334464

- Fax no.: 0038 048 7311203

- E-mail:

Members of the Holy Synod:

- Archbishop George of Kishinev (Chișinău) and Moldova

- Archbishop John of Buinsk and Volzhsk

- Bishop Athanasius of Vologda and Veliky Ustyug

- Bishop Gregory of Sao Paulo and South America

- Bishop Cyril of Voronezh and South Russia

- Bishop Anastasy of Vladivostok

- Bishop Nikon of Ishim and Siberia

- Bishop Anthim of Cimișlia

- Bishop Nicholas of Poti

- Bishop Roman of Haifa

- Bishop John of Melbourne

Website on the Internet:

http://internetsobor.org