Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia
The Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (Russian: Ру́сская Правосла́вная Це́рковь Заграни́цей, romanized: Rússkaya Pravoslávnaya Tsérkov Zagranítsey, lit. 'Russian Orthodox Church Abroad'), also called Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia or ROCOR, or Russian Orthodox Church Abroad (ROCA), is a semi-autonomous part of the Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate). Currently, the position of First-Hierarch of the ROCOR is occupied by Metropolitan Nicholas (Olhovsky).[2]
Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia
Ру́сская Правосла́вная Це́рковь Заграни́цей
ROCOR
Patriarch of Moscow & All Rus' Kirill
Church Slavonic (worship),
Russian (preaching),
English (USA, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand),
Spanish (Spain and Latin America),
German (Germany),
French (France, Switzerland, Canada),
Indonesian (Indonesia),
Haitian Creole (Haiti),
Portuguese (Portugal and Brazil) and others
Patriarchal: Moscow, Russia
Jurisdictional: New York City, NY
1920
2007
Semi-autonomous within Russian Orthodox Church
Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church (1994–1995, then called the Russian Orthodox Free Church)
The ROCOR was established in the early 1920s as a de facto independent ecclesiastical jurisdiction of Eastern Orthodoxy, initially due to lack of regular liaison between the central church authority in Moscow and some bishops due to their voluntary exile after the Russian Civil War. These bishops migrated with other Russians to Western European cities and nations, including Paris and other parts of France, and to the United States and other western countries. Later these bishops rejected the Moscow Patriarchate′s unconditional political loyalty to the Bolshevik regime in the USSR. This loyalty was formally promulgated by the Declaration of 20 July 1927 of Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky), deputy Patriarchal locum tenens. Metropolitan Antony (Khrapovitsky), of Kiev and Galicia, was the founding First-Hierarch of the ROCOR.[3]
After 80 years of separation followed by the fall of the Soviet Union, on 17 May 2007, the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia officially signed the Act of Canonical Communion with the Moscow Patriarchate, restoring the canonical link between the churches.
The ROCOR jurisdiction has around 400 parishes worldwide and an estimated membership of more than 400,000 people.[4] Of these, 232 parishes and 10 monasteries are in the United States; they have 92,000 declared adherents and over 9,000 regular church attendees.[1][5] The ROCOR has 13 hierarchs, with male and female monasteries in the United States, Canada, and the Americas; Australia, New Zealand, and Western Europe.
The ROCOR is headed by the First-Hierarch of the ROCOR (Protohierarch), primate of the whole ROCOR, head of the ROCOR Holy Synod, and bishop of the Russian Orthodox Eparchy of Eastern America and New York. The Holy Synod also has a vice-president. The "supreme authority of the ecclesiastical legislative, administrative, judicial and executive organ" of the ROCOR is the Council of Bishops of the ROCOR which is convened about every two years.[54]
The ROCOR is divided into dioceses, themselves in some cases subdivided into smaller dioceses.
The division into dioceses is as follows:
ROCOR oversees and owns properties of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem, which acts as caretaker to three holy sites in East Jerusalem and Israel/Palestine, all of which are monasteries.
Finance[edit]
The main source of income for the ROCOR central authority is lease of a part of the building that houses the headquarters of the ROCOR's Synod of Bishops situated at the intersection of East 93rd Street and Park Avenue to a private school, estimated in 2016 to generate about US$500,000; the ROCOR was said not to make any monetary contributions towards the ROC's budget.[55]
Western Rite in the ROCOR[edit]
There is a long history of the Western Rite in the ROCOR, although attitudes toward it have varied, and the number of Western Rite parishes is relatively small. St. Petroc Monastery in Tasmania is now under the oversight of Metropolitan Daniel of the Moscow Metropolitanate.[56] The Benedictine Christ the Savior Monastery, founded in 1993 in Rhode Island and moved to Hamilton, Ontario, in 2008 (see main article for references) has incorporated the Oratory of Our Lady of Glastonbury as its monastery chapel. The oratory had previously been a mission of the Antiochian Western Rite Vicariate in the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America, but since October 2007 has been a part of ROCOR. There are a few other parishes that either use the Western Rite exclusively or in part. An American parish, St Benedict of Nursia, in Oklahoma City, uses both the Western Rite and the Byzantine Rite.
In 2011, the ROCOR declared all of its Western Rite parishes to be a "vicariate", parallel to the Antiochian Western Rite Vicariate, and established a website.[57]
On 10 July 2013, an extraordinary session of the Synod of Bishops of ROCOR removed Bishop Jerome of Manhattan and Fr Anthony Bondi from their positions in the vicariate; ordered a halt to all ordinations and a review of those recently conferred by Bishop Jerome; and decreed preparations be made for the assimilation of existing Western Rite communities to mainstream ROCOR liturgical practice.[58]