Moscow, August 16, 2023
pravoslavie.lv
The Russian Orthodox Church is displeased with the episcopal consecration that took place in Riga on Sunday, August 13. As OrthoChristian reported yesterday, it was the first time a bishop was consecrated in Riga in 80 years.
However, the Office of the Moscow Patriarchate for Dioceses of the Near Abroad stated yesterday that the consecration of Archimandrite John (Lipšāns) as Bishop of Valmiera was celebrated “in violation of the statutes of the Russian Orthodox Church.”
As part of the Moscow Patriarchate, the Latvian Orthodox Church holds the status of a Self-Governing Church, and according to the relevant section of the Patriarchate’s statutes, “Bishops of a Self-Governing Church are elected by the Synod [of the Self-Governing Church] from candidates approved by the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia and the Holy Synod [of the Moscow Patriarchate].”
pravoslavie.lv However, the hierarchs of the Latvian Church did not seek or receive a blessing from the Patriarch or Synod to consecrate Bp. John.
This move from the hierarchs would seem to be in accord with the decision the Latvian Church made last fall.
In September, the Latvian Parliament passed a law requiring the Church to amend its statutes, making it not just a self-governing Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, but completely independent of the Russian Church, at least from a legal point of view. The Church’s press service issued a statement essentially accepting its state-proclaimed autocephalous status, and in late October, a council of the Latvian Church made the relevant statutory changes and appealed to the Moscow Patriarchate for a decision on its status.
In March, the Holy Synod announced that the Latvian Church’s appeal would be considered at the next session of the Bishops’ Council (a larger body than the Holy Synod, consisting of every hierarch of the Moscow Patriarchate).
And in yesterday’s statement, the Office for Dioceses of the Near Abroad reiterates that, “The Bishops’ Council of the Russian Orthodox Church, which will be held in good time, will have to give a canonical assessment of everything that is happening in the Latvian Orthodox Church today.”
“We understand the difficult political circumstances in which the Latvian Orthodox Church finds itself today, but this is not a reason for violating Church unity,” the statement reads.
The Bishops’ Council has been postponed for several years now, first because of the COVID pandemic and now because of the international situation caused by the war in Ukraine.
The statement concludes:
We call on all the faithful children of the Russian Orthodox Church to strengthen their holy prayers, to strictly preserve the unity of Holy Orthodoxy and to continue their way of life under the omophorion of our primate, His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, without succumbing to pressure and temptations from external destructive forces.
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