Moscow, June 27, 2022
Photo: sobor.fr
His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia sent a congratulatory message yesterday to the head of the Archdiocese of the Western European Parishes of Russian Tradition, Metropolitan Jean of Dubna, on the occasion of the Archdiocese’s centenary, reports the DECR website.
The Most Rev. Jean
Metropolitan of Dubna
Head of the Archdiocese of the Western European Parishes of Russian tradition
Your Eminence, dear Vladyka,
I greet you, the clergy, monastics and laity of the Archdiocese of the Western European Parishes of Russian Tradition on its centenary.
The social upheavals that befell Russia in the early 20th century forced millions of our compatriots to seek asylum in other lands, including Western Europe. Living in a foreign land in labors and privations, our people cherished the Orthodox faith, drawing from it spiritual strength and consolation, ever aware that the strength to go on produces character. And character produces hope (cf. Rom. 5:4).
Life in a foreign cultural environment impelled Russian people to look anew at their rich heritage and helped them to discover in it profound meaning that they didn’t know before. Thus, among the graphic spiritual and cultural phenomena of those years in Europe was the work of the Paris Theological School, which influenced the minds of contemporaries and the development of Orthodox ecclesial scholarship as a whole.
Bearing witness in the Western world to the true beauty of the Eastern Christian tradition, Russian emigres created parish communities, built churches and established theological schools, Orthodox brotherhoods and sisterhoods. Thus was initiated a structure headed by Metropolitan Eulogius of eternal memory, and later transformed into an Archdiocese. Over the past hundred years, the Archdiocese of Western European Parishes walked a difficult path. But the awareness of its responsibility to preserve and develop the Russian religious and cultural tradition remained as the surety of it reunification with the Mother Russian Church, which occurred when the time arrrived.
I wish you all spiritual and physical strength and God’s help in your work.
With love in the Lord,
+ Kirill
Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia
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