ECUMENICAL PATRIARCHATE

Exarchate of Parishes of Russian
Tradition in Western Europe

Bishop Basil of Amphipolis: Continuity and Change

Part 2: the life of the Episcopal Vicariate

In this second and shorter part of my talk I would like to look at the Vicariate itself. The first question we might reasonably ask is: why should such a name be used to describe what we are? The word comes directly from the Acts of the Moscow Council of 1917-18. Russia at that time had huge dioceses, often much larger than any bishop could hope to administer adequately, and it was thought that it would be possible to divide them up, for the purposes of administration, by creating within these dioceses ‘vicariates’ (vikariatsva). These would be headed by assistant bishops, who would administer that particular part of the diocese more or less on their own, subject of course to the ultimate approval of the diocesan bishop himself. The word ‘vicariate’ has to my ear a rather Western, Roman sound, but it’s use is simply a reflection of the situation of the Russian Church at the beginning of the twentieth century.

When I first wrote to Patriarch Bartholomew earlier this year, I asked that the diocese – or that part of it which wished to be received by the Ecumenical Patriarchate – should be received as a diocese. This turned out not to be possible, since it would have involved changing the Statutes of the Archdiocese, a long drawn out process. But by using a pre-existing formula that already belonged to the canonical tradition of the Russian Church, it was possible to integrate our local ecclesial reality into the Archdiocese without much difficulty at all.

The Archdiocese has its own Archdiocesan Council, and it is a great privilege for us today to have three members of that council here among us – the Secretary of the Council, Michel Sollogoub, the Treasurer, Ivan Cheret, and Antoine Nivière, who is, one might say, the historical consciousness of the Archdiocese.

The Archdiocesan Council normally meets once a month. Its membership, both clergy and lay, is chosen by the Archdiocesan Assembly for a three year period every three years. The Archbishop and any assistant bishops are members ex officio. I have been to meetings of the Council, the body that supervises the day-to-day running of the Archdiocese and monitors the life of the parishes. At the moment I am arranging for the translation of the Archdiocesan Statutes into English so that they can go on our website. This should be finished by the end of the year.

But this is really only one part of the picture. In conversations with Archbishop Gabriel early on, we agreed that the basic structures of the Diocese of Sourozh would be preserved in the Vicariate and in this way become part of the Archdiocese. This means that we will continue to have our own Assembly and our own Council. The provision of church courts is covered by the Archdiocesan Statutes, which we can simply accept. We will also have our own financial administration, and of course it will be our responsibility to deal with the British Government in matters concerning Child Protection Policy, the Criminal Records Bureau, the Charity Commission, and so on. All these things will have to be dealt with locally. Thus we will continue to preserve the forms of Church life that we developed in the past under Metropolitan Anthony.

In practice this has meant that during these past few months there have been established continuing bodies – a continuing Assembly, which we expect to meet in the new year, and more importantly a continuing Council, which has in effect become a Vicariate Council. This does meet regularly to discuss matters that affect us all. We will gradually move towards the regularisation of these bodies within the framework of a new statute for the Vicariate.

This process of gradual adaptation to our life in the Archdiocese will take some time and will require some changes. One of the things we shall have to do is to re-establish our financial base as a Vicariate. We shall have to begin again. We do not know what the results of any settlement regarding the assets of the Diocese of Sourozh will be, but we have opened an account in the name of the Vicariate and your cheques will deposited in that account in the course of the coming week.

The same kind of activity is also taking place in the case of the former Cathedral Parish, the congregation that worships here in St Andrew’s Holborn. This community is also opening its own account. For many of you here today, this will be your first visit to St Andrew’s. It is a Wren church, going back to the 17th century, but it was severely damaged in the Great Fire. It was originally a mediaeval church with Anglo-Saxon foundations and a fairly important building. Fr Alexander has a marvellous picture engraving dating from 1647 – before the Great Fire of 1666 – which shows London viewed from the south bank of the River Thames. In it you can see the earlier gothic St Paul’s and behind it you see the gothic tower of St Andrew’s ‘in Holborne’. In the following century the church was rebuilt by Christopher Wren in the form it has today.

We are now worshipping here twice a month, with Fr John Lee in charge, and we are very grateful to the Church of England for letting us use this beautiful church. As you can see there are and have been pre-existing connections with Orthodox worship. The painted crucifix and the large icons of the Saviour and the Mother of God on either side were in the church already when we arrived. It’s as if they were here to welcome us.

Many of you will have questions about our structures and about the way we relate to the Archdiocese, particularly perhaps about financial issues. In the past we have asked the parishes and eucharistic communities to contribute ten per cent of their annual income to the needs of the Diocese, and now this will be paid to the Vicariate. But there is also a levy that all parishes need to pay to the Archdiocese as well, and so we will need to work out a formula for that. The Archdiocesan Treasurer, Ivan Cheret, has had some thoughts about this and you will hear about such purely administrative matters in due course.

A much more important task for us is to develop a sense of belonging to a larger European body. Europe has developed greatly as a political, economic, social and cultural entity over the last thirty or forty years. The consciousness of people in Western Europe of being European is growing all the time - even in this country. Perhaps we will find ourselves taking a lead in this.

But it is also extremely important that we think of ourselves as belonging to a larger body that is rooted in the local life of the various countries that make up Western Europe and in which the communities of the Archdiocese of Orthodox Parishes of Russian Tradition in Western Europe are found. To locate the limits of the Archdiocese you simply need to move eastwards to the borders of the established Orthodox Churches of Eastern Europe. For example, the border of the Archdiocese falls at the line between Sweden and Finland. Finland has a well-established Orthodox Church of Russian tradition. Orthodoxy in Sweden is still is the process of development. There is an established Orthodox Church in Poland, and so the eastern border of Archdiocese is the border between Poland and Germany, and the Czech border also. The Czech Republic has a well-established Orthodox Church, and so the eastern border of the Archdiocese is the border between the Czech Republic and Germany. Parishes of the Archdiocese could in theory be found in Austria, but it will never extend into Serbia or the other countries of the Former Republic of Yugoslavia, because there are established Orthodox Churches there. But it does include Italy. In a sense, we just fill the space between the Atlantic Ocean and the established Orthodox Churches I have just named. It is important that we have this picture in our minds when we think of the Archdiocese, because our links are not just with Paris but with the whole of Western Europe.

Archbishop Gabriel has pointed out to me that for a good number of the parishes ion the Archdiocese the first second language is English, and not French. In all the Scandinavian countries people are much more likely to have learned English at school than any other language. Even at a linguistic level we have a role to play.

But the primary purpose, really, of being part of the Archdiocese is simply to be the Church. Not to be one particular kind of ethnic Church, but to be the Church for everybody in the countries in which we find ourselves. And to do this, I would say, is in a sense to find your freedom in Christ. To be the Church prophetically in the place in which you live, to which you have been called by the providence of God. To live that life fully is to live the freedom of Christ where you are. For me this is an extremely important aspect of this new start of our life together as a vicariate within the Archdiocese.