About Us

The Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) was founded in November 1920 with the blessing of the legitimate Church authority – the Synod and the Supreme Church Council, under the presidency of Saint Patriarch Tikhon (Decree No. 362).

On Russian and foreign ships, fleeing the terror of the god-fighting Bolsheviks, a large number of officers and soldiers, Cossacks, nobles, and peasants, workers and intellectuals permanently left their homeland and settled around the world. Along with their flock, a part of the clergy who organized spiritual life abroad also left.

After the death of Patriarch Tikhon in 1925, it was impossible to convene a Council and select canonical church authority in the USSR, so the Church administration in Moscow was led by various hierarchs, appointed not by council but 'by will'. One such 'by will' president was the former renovator Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky), who could not withstand the communist pressure and in 1927 issued a shameful Declaration, confirming complete submission to the communist government. Because of this betrayal of the Orthodox faith, ROCOR severed all ties with the center in Moscow, and since then has had no connection with the Moscow administration. At the same time, ROCOR maintained spiritual connection with the persecuted Catacomb Church in the USSR, which also severed all ties with the 'Soviet church', and some of its parts even anathematized it.

On September 4, 1943, at a meeting with three 'loyal' metropolitans, Stalin, for political reasons, decided to form a church subordinate to the communist authorities, and three days later, by his order, a Council of Bishops was held from 19 specially selected hierarchs who 'elected' the Stalin-appointed Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) as 'patriarch'. Thus, the current Russian Orthodox Church - Moscow Patriarchate (ROC MP) was established. The Moscow Patriarchate (MP) was formed on September 8, 1943, uncanonically, by the will of the communist dictator Joseph Stalin, who is its founder.

On May 17, 2007, a union of part of ROCOR with ROC MP took place, although MP did not renounce what originally caused the division with ROCOR, namely: sergianism and ecumenism. In doing so, the Moscow Patriarchate recognized ROCOR, contrary to the past long-standing slander as uncanonical and schismatic.

Not the entire Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia united with MP, a part of it, under the omophorion of the Metropolitan of New York and Eastern America, Agathangel, remained faithful to the covenants of the Fathers of ROCOR and the many new martyrs and confessors of the Russian Catacomb Church.

Our small community is part of Russian Orthodox Church Abroad and has no connection with the Moscow Patriarchate or with the Russian state and governing forces in modern Russia, where the Soviet-atheistic way of thinking has gained alarmingly large influence. Our church has never recognized the Moscow Patriarchate, as it is an organization founded by the communist dictator Stalin, at a time when the Church in the USSR was brutally persecuted.