ROC Exarch of Africa responds to accusations of "ecclesiastical racism"

The Patriarchal Exarch of Africa, Metropolitan Leonid (Gorbachev) of Klin, in response to the accusations of ethnophyletism (“ecclesiastical racism”) by the Patriarchate of Alexandria against the Russian Orthodox Church, stated on his Telegram channel that the ROC has never divided believers on religious, racial and linguistic grounds. 

According to Metropolitan Leonid, earlier the Synod of the Patriarchate of Alexandria, in the context of criticizing the creation of the Patriarchal Exarchate in Africa, accused the Russian Orthodox Church of a “virus of ethnophyletism” and involvement in “neocolonialism”. But the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church drew the attention of the accusers that it was precisely on the part of the Patriarchates of Constantinople and Alexandria, which recognized the schismatic OCU, that the distortion of Orthodox ecclesiology (the doctrine of the Church) was allowed.

“Ethnophyletism is the Church of one nation. The Russian Orthodox Church has gone through a difficult period – more than 70 years of survival in the practically godless Soviet space, and our parishioners were of different nationalities, we in the Church have never divided people into "Greeks and Jews." And now the Russian Orthodox Church does not divide its children on religious, national, linguistic or other grounds,” said the Exarch of Africa.

Metropolitan Leonid assured that Africa will not be an exception.

“Russian Orthodoxy brings to the world not Russian superiority but national and cultural diversity, and we enter the African continent with the same thesis – that in the Church ‘there is neither Greek nor Jew’ (Col. 3:11)” noted Patriarchal Exarch.

The hierarch stressed that the same cannot be said about Greek Orthodoxy, "which is precisely in many respects infected with ethnophyletism".

“Now, for example, there has been published an interview with a Madagascar cleric who was a deacon for many years, then a priest, who says that they, African clerics, have never been to the house of their bishop at all. They brought his things to the door and left or took away things and that's it. That is, they did not enter further than the porch. However, all the Greeks who may not even be parishioners of their temple calmly walk around his courtyard and house and receive all sorts of preferences. That is, people here feel humiliation precisely on racial and linguistic grounds,” the Exarch commented on his thesis.

Metropolitan Leonid added that among the Greek bishops there are bright representatives who sow "reasonable, good, eternal", but, alas, many of them suffer from the virus of "Hellenic superiority".

“Greek churches go anywhere under their Greek flags and preach their Greek, Helladic history to everyone. But Russia and the Russian Church have a different doctrine. We don't say we're the best and we don't know anyone else. The Russian will take off his last shirt and give it, including in the Church,” resumed Metropolitan Leonid.

As reported, according to Metropolitan Leonid of Klin, the ROC will not leave the African continent.

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