A few weeks ago it became known that the Russian Orthodox Church is continuing the efforts to sow a split in Africa, seeking to build an administrative center in New Cairo. Later, the Coptic Church agreed to hand over one of its temples to the Moscow Patriarchate. Patriarch Theodore of Alexandria reacted sharply to the move.
Patriarch Theodore wrote a letter to the head of the Coptic Church, Patriarch Tawadros, in which he noted that “the Russian Church not only stopped at a verbal refusal, but also went further, illegally encroaching on our spiritual jurisdiction, seeking to bribe the clergy and parishes in Africa for vengeful reasons and selfish purposes.” The patriarch added that the arbitrariness of the Russian Orthodox Church is taking on a general Orthodox dimension.
In turn, the so-called “exarch of the ROC in Africa” Metropolitan Leonid (Gorbachev) of the ROC responded to this. He openly threatens the Patriarch of All Africa to continue his divisive activities and bribery of the African clergy if the Alexandrian Church does not retract its decision to recognize the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.
“Reconsider your decision, Your Eminence, and then perhaps part of Africa will remain under the operational control of the Church of Greece. Otherwise: what did you want from the bears and jackals from the North?!” Gorbachev wrote.
The hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church also for some reason decided that the Moscow Patriarchate can arbitrarily, without council discussion, decide and judge which of the Local Churches is in a schism and which is not.
“The Church of Alexandria, led by Patriarch Theodore, split after the Church of Constantinople – this is where the trouble and horror lies,” Gorbachev’s post reads.
Gorbachev deliberately silences the fact that, according to his own logic, the Russian Orthodox Church is in communication with schismatics because it has not severed Eucharistic ties with the Romanian, Georgian, Serbian, and all other churches that retain communication with the Churches of Alexandria and Constantinople, Cyprus and Greece, all of whom have recognized the Tomos of the OCU.
