While awaiting an official English translation from the Archdiocese of Russian Orthodox Churches in Western Europe, Orthodoxy in Dialogue offers our own to our readers. For context see Archdiocese of Russian Orthodox Churches in Western Europe/Exarchate of the Ecumenical Patriarchate to Be Abolished and It’s Official: Ecumenical Patriarchate Dissolves Russian Archdiocese of Western Europe. (Note: “Rue Daru” is used for our purposes as the commonly known nickname for the Archdiocese, not necessarily with specific reference to the cathedral itself.)
Communiqué of the Archdiocesan Council – November 30, 2018
The Archdiocese of Russian Orthodox Churches of Western Europe, which constitutes one of the oldest Orthodox ecclesial entities in our regions, was placed under the pastoral responsibility of Metropolitan Evlogy (Georgievsky) by St. Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow, by decree of April 8, 1921. Cast into exile by the Bolshevik Revolution, the Russian emigrants established, with faith and courage, an ecclesial presence founded on the major principles of the unfinished Council of Moscow of 1917-18. Established first in Berlin, the see of the Archdiocese was transferred to Paris, to the Cathedral of St. Alexander Nevsky, where it assumed the form of an association in accordance with French law, composed of communities and parishes established in France and throughout Western Europe: thus it remains to this day. The statutes of this association—The Guiding Diocesan Union of Russian Orthodox Associations in Western Europe—were submitted to the prefecture on February 26, 1924 and are still in force today.
In 1931, to guarantee its independence and permanence, the Archdiocese requested to depend on the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, which was accepted by a patriarchal and synodal Tomos of February 17, 1931, giving the Archdiocese the status of a provisional Exarchate of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Read More
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