Synod of Metropolitan Agathangel Meets in the USA

Last week a meeting of the Synod Abroad of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) under Metropolitan Agathangel (Pashkovskiy) of Odessa was held at the Tolstoy Foundation in Valley Cottage, New York. At the meeting the assembled hierarchs, most of whom have been consecrated since Metropolitan Agathangel's schism from the mainstream ROCOR in 2007, agreed to publish an appeal to their clergy and faithful not to return to the Moscow Patriarchate. The Synod also approved plans for the establishment of a new international headquarters and residence for its first hierarch in New York. The consecration of the new headquarters' church, which will be dedicated to St. Philaret (Vosnesenskiy) the Confessor of New York, is to be celebrated on 19 November.

During the meeting Metropolitan Agathangel informed the Synod of his conversation with deposed Patriarch Irinaios (Skopelitis) of Jerusalem, claiming that he was deposed for his anti-ecumenical stance and could therefore continue to remain in communion with the schism as the ROCOR had been in communion with him prior to the 2007 reunion with Moscow. (This despite the fact that the strongly anti-ecumenical Patriarch Diodorus (Karivalis) of Jerusalem was never deposed during his patriarchate and the fact that the ROCOR remained in communion with Jerusalem when Patriarch Theophilos III (Giannopoulos) was enthroned in 2005.) This is pending the agreement of the Synod in Resistance of the Greek Orthodox Church.

Lastly, the Synod considered an appeal from Old Calendrist parishes in Georgia for reception into the ROCOR. More on the Synod's discussions can be found here.