Sydney, August 6, 2020
Photo: wikimedia.org
On July 24, 2020, the ROCOR Diocese in Sydney, Australia, hosted the celebrations for the centennial of the Russian Church Abroad, as their website reports. A special exhibition was organized dedicated to Czar-Martyr Nicholas II and the Royal Family, who were glorified with the other Holy New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia in 1981.
His Eminence, Metropolitan Hilarion of Eastern America and New York, First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, who is also the long-time ruling hierarch of the Australia and New Zealand Diocese, and has done many great works for Orthodoxy in those lands, congratulated clergy and parishioners. His Eminence said in an epistle:
I send my heartfelt greetings to you all, the organizers and participants of this festive occasion, on this feast day of St Olga, Equal-to-the-Apostles, even now “shining as the moon in the night,” as the Church properly praises her, on this 100th anniversary of the establishment of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, which always confessed herself as an indissoluble part of the historic Russian Orthodox Church, which nourished and reared the Russian nation and created its great sovereignty!
Meanwhile, Russian emigres still lived with the hope for the renascence of the Faith of Christ and the Fatherland, carefully preserving the treasured legacy of the Russian Church: churches and holy sites belonging to the Mother Church during Imperial times found in other countries. Lovingly tending to them, they also built magnificent churches, monasteries, holy places and schools, sacrificing their last pennies to this God-pleasing effort. They preserved the customs, traditions and piety of their forebears, rearing succeeding generations in the spirit of the Russian Church. They lovingly, attentively and very devotedly followed the life of the Church in the Homeland and reverently bowed before the podvig and memory of the Holy New Martyrs and Confessors, tirelessly declaring their spiritual efforts in foreign and heterodox spheres, trying to arouse their conscience. All of this was well understood by the Primates of the Serbian Orthodox Church, which took under her truly fraternal auspices the Hierarchy of the Supreme Ecclesiastical Administration Abroad, which was recast as the Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia.
In connection with this, I fondly remember the words spoken by the confessor of our times, Metropolitan Amfilohije of Montenegro and the Littoral at the 4th All-Diaspora Council held in San Francisco: “We share common fathers and teachers.”
Today we thankfully and prayerfully honor all those who struggled and held high our Holy Russian banners in foreign lands, not submitting to the waves of modernism and reformism which so powerful everywhere, inspiring not only us sinners to strive harder, but also the newly-arrived emigres and the multitude of local peoples of the lands where our Church exists. May the Lord continue to help us, may we follow the example of our predecessors and continue to bear witness to the ideals of Holy Rus, preserve and increase her richest legacy! Amen.
The festivities included a performance by the Men’s Choir of Australia and New Zealand under the direction of N. A. Kotliaroff. As the Synodical website described the singers, they were “descendants of White emigres who cherish their faith, love for Homeland, traditions and culture of the Russian people.”
Photo: synod.com
The event was held in the Queen Victoria Building in Sydney, Australia. While His Eminence, Metropolitan Hilarion is himself a Ukrainian-Canadian, and his parents hailed from Volhynia—an old Western Russian land—he was long the administrator of the Australia and New Zealand Diocese, which possesses a quite unique ethnic makeup and tradition in the Russian abroad. While the Russian diaspora in the Great Lakes region of North America, which is the historical heartland of Eastern Christian settlement in the new world, has a strong South-Western Russian, Carpatho-Rusyn, and Ukrainian character, the Australian and New Zealand diocese is slightly different.
The Australian and New Zealand diocese has a large number of White “Great Russian” emigres who fled the godless authorities from China and the East, through the prayers of Saint John of Shanghai, and in this way, has much in common with the San Francisco diocese in its makeup and character. Despite that, the first Russian bishop in Australia, Archbishop Feodor (Raphalsky) was himself, ironically, like Metropolitan Hilarion, of Volhynian heritage, as is common in the North American diaspora. The first Russian parish built in Australia, the Cathedral of St Nicholas has a particularly strong and old tradition of venerating the Royal Martyrs. In all, this makes the Australian and New Zealand Diocese a unique island in the world of Holy Rus’ abroad, but one which still shares the common roots uniting the whole Church Abroad.
Matfey Shaheen
