(Clockwise from left) Archbishop Kyrill (Dmitrieff), Archpriest Mark Hodges, Archpriest John Peck 

On January 10, 2021, Orthodoxy in Dialogue published Open Letter: OCA Priest Participates in Trump Riot, Reported to FBI, bringing Father Mark Hodges’ presence  at the January 6 riot to the attention of Archbishop Paul (Gassios) of thrice-blessed memory of the OCA Diocese of the Midwest. The letter unleashed a storm of articles worldwide on news sources great and small, and resulted in Hodges’ temporary suspension from the priesthood. As we subsequently reported here,  his suspension was lifted four months later after he issued an ‘apology’ — “in which it is clear,” we noted, “he feels he did nothing wrong in supporting, and continuing to support, the conspiracy theory of a stolen election that wreaks ongoing havoc on American national life and domestic security.”

A year after the Trump riot, as we reported in  ROCOR Picks Only the Best of March 12, 2022, the OCA released Hodges to the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. We commented at the time, Read More

Patriarch Kirill (L), Metropolitan Onufriy (R)

Since the onset of the brutal, unprovoked, and ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine three full months ago, the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) and the Orthodox Church in America (OCA), both of them ‘daughter churches’ of the Russian Orthodox Church, have been consistent in two things: first, their abject cravenness to former KGB agent, now Patriarch Kirill Gundiaev in refusing to name him as fully and unambiguously complicit in the oceans of bloodshed on Ukrainian soil (Archbishop Gabriel of ROCOR’s Canadian diocese openly supports the invasion, as we reported in our ROCOR Archbishop of Canada Justifies Wholesale Slaughter of Ukraine on March 9); and second, their repeated expressions of moral and material support for the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) and its primate, Metropolitan Onufriy. Their support derives from ROCOR’s, the OCA’s, and the UOC-MP’s shared loyalty to the Moscow Patriarchate and its patriarch, even in the face of the most wanton murder of preborn and newborn children, children, teens, moms, dads, grandmas, grandpas, and other civilians. Read More

The present article appeared yesterday on Religion in Praxis. Reprinted with permission.

Patriarch Porfirije of the Serbian Orthodox Church (left foreground) and Archbishop Stefan of the Macedonian Orthodox Church (right foreground) concelebrate the Divine Liturgy at the cathedral church in Skopje. (From the website of the Serbian Orthodox Church.)

How can a conflict that appeared to be unsolvable for over half a century gets to be resolved in less than a month? What has changed in the perception among the hierarchs of the Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC) to greenlight and unanimously back the autocephaly request of the Macedonian Orthodox Church-Ohrid Archbishopric (MOC-OA)? These are the questions that we would not get clear answers today as the process leading to today’s historic decision to grant autocephaly to the MOC-OA by the Serbian Orthodox Church has been kept in secret and far from the public. While the pace of developments has been astonishingly fast, the political context in which this decision was taken may serve as a pointer to some of the answers to the questions above.  Read More

.

Archbishop Stefan (Veljanovski) of Ohrid and Macedonia

Church of St. Clement of Ohrid. Cathedral (Sobor) of the Macedonian Orthodox Church. Skopje, North Macedonia.

✠

This weekend in Sremski Karlovci, the Serbian Orthodox Church will be celebrating 100 years since the re-establishment of the Serbian Patriarchate. The 1920s were instrumental in the shaping and forming of what we today refer as the Serbian Orthodox Church. After the formation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, the Ecumenical Patriarch issued a tomos of autocephaly in 1922, confirming the unification of the various ecclesiastical units in this part of the Balkans under one Serbian Church.

Many things have changed since 1922, but the tomos issued a century ago is still in force. This provides the Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC) with ecclesiastical jurisdiction rights that span seven independent states. The Ecumenical Patriarchate’s (EP) decision of May 9, 2022, which restores the ecclesiastical canonicity of the Macedonian Orthodox Church-Ohrid Archbisphric (MOC-OA), directly affects the future of the SOC’s right to claim jurisdiction over North Macedonia. Read More