Paris, September 20, 2021
The new Metropolitan of France of the Patriarchate of Constantinople was enthroned on Saturday morning at the Cathedral of St. Stephen in Paris.
The newly-enthroned Met. Dimitrios replaces Metropolitan Emmanuel, who was transferred from France to Chalcedon in Turkey in February.
Met. Dimitrios was enthroned by the Constantinople hierarch Metropolitan Arsenios of Austria, with a number of other hierarchs in attendance, reports orthodoxia.info.
Among the attending guests were a number of other Constantinople hierarchs, representatives of the Catholic church in France, and His Eminence Metropolitan John of Dubna of the Russian Orthodox Church’s Archdiocese of Russian Churches in Western Europe.
The Archdiocese posted several photos from the event, with the caption: “Axios! Аксиос!! Άξιος!”
The Archdiocese was part of the Patriarchate of Constantinople until late 2018, when the Synod of Constantinople suddenly revoked its charter, and later suddenly released its hierarch, then-Archbishop John of Chariopoulis. The majority of the Archdiocese voted to follow their hierarch into the Russian Orthodox Church, where the Archdiocese initially began in the early 20th century. The Archdiocese was formally reunited with the Moscow Patriarchate on November 4, 2019.
While still in France, Met. Emmanuel threatened legal action against Abp. John (before it had rejoined the Russian Church), though the two sides later agreed to co-exist peacefully.
Recall that the Russian Church has been out of communion with the Patriarchate of Constantinople since October 2018, due to the latter’s anti-canonical and anti-Orthodox invasion of Ukrainian Church territory, where it later created an “autocephalous” church out of unordained schismatics.
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