Rue Daru in Great Britain

The Archdiocese of Orthodox Churches of Russian Tradition in Western Europe is an archdiocese of the Moscow Patriarchate, based in Paris, which keeps its own rules of church life. It is known as “Rue Daru”, after the street on which its cathedral, St Alexander Nevsky, stands. In Great Britain the archdiocese has a deanery, that is, a group of parishes entrusted to a dean. Today it includes a few small communities, a skete at Walsingham and, since December 2025, a vicar bishop born in Glasgow. A vicar bishop is a bishop who assists the ruling bishop, the hierarch who governs the diocese.

The history of the archdiocese and its near-century-long separation from ROCOR, the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, were traced in the article Rue Daru, Russian Paris and ROCOR. Here we follow only the British part of that history: how the archdiocese came to Great Britain, where its communities pray today, and why its relationship with the ROCOR diocese here has remained troubled.

The Russian parish in London

The Paris archdiocese was born in 1921, when St Patriarch Tikhon entrusted the Russian parishes of Western Europe to Metropolitan Evlogy. In 1931 Metropolitan Evlogy, together with the parishes that followed him, passed under the Ecumenical Patriarchate, that is, the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Among them was the Russian parish in London, the former church of the Russian embassy.

At the end of the Second World War, Metropolitan Evlogy wished to return to the Moscow Patriarchate, and the London parish followed him. After his death in 1946, the Paris archdiocese went back under Constantinople, but the London parish remained under Moscow. From then on, their paths parted.

From the London parish was born, in 1962, the Diocese of Sourozh, through which the Moscow Patriarchate shepherds its faithful in Great Britain and Ireland. Until 2003 the diocese was led by Metropolitan Anthony (Bloom), who gave it a distinctive character. Much of the worship was in English, and the parishes gathered faithful of many nations, among them many English people who had come to Orthodoxy. The faithful received Communion often, without being required to go to confession before each Communion, and clergy and laity worked together in the life of the diocese.

The Sourozh crisis

After the fall of communism, many Russians came to Great Britain. Some of them, used to church life as it was in Russia, complained to Moscow about the way things were done in the diocese and asked that Sourozh be brought closer to the usual order of the Russian Church. Those who wanted the change called it normalisation; those who rejected it called it Russification.

In 2003, when Metropolitan Anthony retired, Moscow entrusted the running of the diocese, as administrator, to Bishop Basil (Osborne), whom the metropolitan had wished to be his successor. A few days later Metropolitan Anthony fell asleep in the Lord, and the disagreements in the diocese deepened.

Bishop Basil and those close to him feared that Moscow wanted to change the character Metropolitan Anthony had given the diocese. The bishop said that Moscow wanted to turn Sourozh into a “normal” diocese outside Russia, as Moscow understood it. He also maintained that the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate was supporting those who contested his leadership. He regarded this support as an uncanonical interference in the diocese he administered. He confessed that he felt increasingly worn down by the pressure of those who opposed him.

He therefore sought protection in Constantinople. Also under the Ecumenical Patriarchate was the Paris archdiocese, which cared for parishes of Russian tradition in Western Europe. In many respects it resembled Sourozh. It had been born of the same Russian emigration from which Metropolitan Anthony came, for he had grown up in Paris. It kept the Russian order of services, but its parishes also served in the languages of the places where they lived. Its faithful came from many nations.

The archdiocese was governed according to the rules of the Moscow Council of 1917–1918, the council that elected St Tikhon as patriarch. The Council regarded clergy and laity as co-workers of the bishop. The same council had guided Metropolitan Anthony in Sourozh. Through this archdiocese, the faithful of Sourozh could pass under Constantinople without losing the Russian tradition and the way of life they knew.

In April 2006, Bishop Basil asked Patriarch Alexy to release him from the Moscow Patriarchate together with the whole Diocese of Sourozh, not only with those who wished to follow him. He wanted Sourozh to become a new diocese of Constantinople, alongside the Paris archdiocese. In the letter he then sent to the Ecumenical Patriarch, he spoke only of himself and of the clergy and parishes who wished to follow him. Addressing Constantinople, he invoked, among others, canons 9 and 17 of the Fourth Ecumenical Council. In the interpretation of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, these canons give the see of Constantinople the right to receive such appeals. The Moscow Patriarchate does not accept this interpretation when it is applied to bishops of other autocephalous Churches.

Moscow did not grant the release. Patriarch Alexy urged him to go on shepherding the faithful of Sourozh within the Russian Church and asked him to withdraw his letter to Constantinople. Bishop Basil refused, and in May 2006 the Patriarch removed him from the leadership of the diocese and retired him, without the right to move to another jurisdiction.

Constantinople nevertheless received him, although he had no letter of release, that is, the document by which a cleric’s bishop allows him to pass under another hierarch. It did not, however, give him the new diocese he had asked for. It made him a vicar bishop in the Paris archdiocese itself.

More than ten parishes and several smaller communities left Sourozh with him, among them the Annunciation parish in Oxford, where he was the parish priest. From them was born the British part of the Paris archdiocese, which by then had existed for more than eighty years. The other parishes, among them the cathedral in London, remained in the Diocese of Sourozh.

Moscow regarded the departure as a breach of the canons. It held that after his removal Bishop Basil no longer had the power to release his clergy. A commission of the Moscow Synod examined the crisis. Among its members was Archbishop Mark of Berlin, who at that time also had charge of the ROCOR diocese in Great Britain. The commission judged Bishop Basil’s decision to be a personal one, taken without consulting the clergy or the diocesan assembly. It also found that the decision was contrary to the statutes of the diocese.

In July 2006, after his reception in Constantinople, the Synod in Moscow suspended him from ministry until repentance or until judgement by a council of bishops. A year later, at the request of Patriarch Bartholomew, Moscow lifted the suspension and gave him the letter of release, so that there should no longer be scandal among the Orthodox of the British Isles. Bishop Basil retired in 2009, and since then the communities that came with him have formed a deanery of the archdiocese.

The separation of 2019

On 27 November 2018 the Ecumenical Patriarchate dissolved the Paris exarchate. An exarchate is a church structure placed under the direct protection of a patriarch. The parishes were asked to come under the Greek metropolises of their countries. For Great Britain, Patriarch Bartholomew asked Archbishop Gregorios of Thyateira to receive the parishes of Russian tradition without delay.

The archdiocese was then led by Jean (Renneteau), a Frenchman born in Bordeaux in 1942. He had first governed it as locum tenens, that is, a hierarch who takes the place of the ruling bishop until an election, from November 2015, and in April 2016 he had been confirmed as archbishop. He later explained why he did not accept the dissolution. According to his account, the Greek metropolitans had told him that they were not in Europe to do mission. The archdiocese, however, had parishes serving in French, others in Russian and others in three or four languages at once. Dividing them among the Greek metropolises would, he said, have extinguished the archdiocese’s spirit of co-working and freedom.

On 23 February 2019 the extraordinary general assembly of the archdiocese rejected the dissolution with almost 93% of the votes. In September, the proposal to unite with the Moscow Patriarchate gained 58.1% of the votes and did not reach the required majority. On 14 September 2019 the Synod of the Russian Church received Archbishop Jean and entrusted to him the clergy and parishes that wished to follow him. The union was completed in Moscow on 3 November 2019, when Archbishop Jean was raised to the rank of metropolitan. Of the 115 parishes, communities and monasteries of the former exarchate, 67 went with him. Today the archdiocese has around sixty parishes in seven countries, with some 75 priests and 30 deacons.

In Great Britain the deanery came apart almost entirely. In the autumn of 2019 the nine larger parishes and communities that had remained in the deanery voted, most of them by large majorities or unanimously, to stay in the Ecumenical Patriarchate under Archbishop Nikitas of Thyateira. Archbishop Nikitas required each parish to go through the proper procedure before being received. The website of the deanery that remained under Moscow states that, because of the changes of jurisdiction, some of its people, communities and property passed to other dioceses.

The communities that remained under Constantinople now form a deanery of parishes of the Russian tradition in the Archdiocese of Thyateira, led by Fr Patrick Hodson. This deanery regards itself as the heir of some of the communities founded by Metropolitan Anthony. According to its website, it includes nine parishes and seven smaller communities.

The parishes:

Oxford – Annunciation, where Bishop Basil had been parish priest
London, Clapham – Holy Apostles Peter and Paul
London, the City – Dormition of the Mother of God
Exeter – Holy Prophet Elias
Nottingham – Sts Aidan and Chad
Chesterfield – St Cuthbert
Keswick, Cumbria – Sts Bega, Mungo and Herbert
Great Walsingham – Transfiguration
Lewes – Nativity of Christ

The smaller communities:

Leeds – St Gregory the Theologian
Lamberhurst, Kent – St Luke the Evangelist
Canterbury – St Theodore of Canterbury
Redbourn, Hertfordshire – Sts Simeon and Anna
Dunblane, Scotland – Sts Nicholas and Blane
Alnwick, Northumberland – the community at the hermitage of the Mother of God and St Cuthbert
Guildford – Holy Trinity

The separation can also be seen on the map. In Exeter, as in the area between Sheffield and Chesterfield, each of the two deaneries now has a community.

The British part of the archdiocese had been born in 2006 of communities that had left Moscow in order to keep their way of life. In 2019, the few communities that went with Metropolitan Jean, among them the one in Glasgow, ended up under Moscow itself. There the archdiocese keeps its own rules of church life. From this small remnant the deanery began to grow again. In September 2020 a community was founded in the Sheffield area, and in March 2021 the parish in Cardiff.

Three structures of one Church

Since 2019 the Russian Church has had three structures in Great Britain. The first is the Diocese of Sourozh, founded in 1962 from the old Russian parish in London. Since 28 December 2018 it has belonged to the Patriarchal Exarchate of Western Europe of the Moscow Patriarchate, which brings together the dioceses of the Russian Church in this part of the world.

The second is the ROCOR Diocese of Great Britain and Western Europe, with its cathedral in Chiswick, in west London, led since September 2018 by Bishop Irenei. According to the Act of Canonical Communion of 2007, ROCOR is an indissoluble self-governing part of the Russian Church. It therefore has a status of its own, different from that of an ordinary diocese.

The third is the deanery of the Paris archdiocese. All three are within the Russian Church, but they differ in status, hierarch and history.

The deanery that remained under Constantinople, however, belongs to the Ecumenical Patriarchate. In October 2018 the Holy Synod of the Russian Church decided to break eucharistic communion with the Ecumenical Patriarchate, because of Constantinople’s decisions concerning Ukraine. For this reason, the communities that until 2019 formed one deanery no longer partake of the same Chalice today.

The communities today

The deanery describes itself as a missionary work with a strong intellectual heritage. It seeks to be an Orthodox presence rooted in the places where it lives, open to all, serving in the language of the place and meeting people where they are. The deanery’s website says that this work is done together with the Diocese of Sourozh, with ROCOR and with the other canonical Orthodox jurisdictions of Western Europe.

The language of worship is mostly English, but each community may also pray in the languages of its faithful: Welsh or Gaelic, Russian, Ukrainian, Romanian, Greek. Their calendar gives a place to the saints of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, alongside the Russian liturgical roots. The communities are scattered from Glasgow to Exeter, and several of them pray in borrowed churches.

The deanery’s website now lists six parishes and communities and one skete:

Cardiff – St Theodore and St Teilo
Glasgow – Holy Archangel Gabriel
Exeter – St Pancras and St Sergius
Sheffield – St Silouan and All Saints of Britain and Ireland
Northampton – St Anne
Norwich – St John the Theologian
Walsingham – Skete of the Mother of God “Unexpected Joy”

Cardiff: St Theodore and St Teilo

Metropolitan Jean founded the parish in March 2021, with Fr Jacob Siemens as rector. Fr Jacob is Canadian, has lived in Wales for some twenty years and has eight children. The parish grew out of the community he had shepherded in Cardiff before becoming Orthodox, since several of its faithful came to Orthodoxy together with him. The patrons of the parish are two saints of the first millennium, venerated in these islands. St Theodore of Tarsus was Archbishop of Canterbury in the seventh century. St Teilo was a bishop in Wales in the sixth century. Fr Jacob devoted his doctoral thesis to St Theodore’s teaching on Christ, and the work was published in 2010.

On Sundays the Liturgy is served at 12:30 in the Methodist church on Conway Road. At the beginning of 2026, through the gift of an American benefactor, the parish bought a church building on the edge of the city, which it describes as historic. The building still has to be fitted out and consecrated, and until then the Liturgy continues to be served on Conway Road. Since June 2026 the parish has been raising money for an iconostasis, sacred vessels, a kitchen, toilets and restoration work. On 2 October 2026 the appeal had raised £6,436 of the £8,000 sought.

In its appeal the parish recalls the tradition according to which St Aristobulus, one of the Seventy Apostles, was the first bishop of the Britons and died a martyr in Wales. As early as 2021, Fr Jacob said that he wanted to call people to the faith through the saints who lived in these places. The land around Cardiff, he said, is full of holy wells, which he comes across almost every two kilometres when he goes out on his bicycle.

Fr Jacob also leads the Centre for Orthodox Formation in Western Europe, a centre of theological formation of the archdiocese, opened in 2026, which receives students from all over the world. In 2023 he founded in Cardiff, together with Dr Joshua Matthan Brown, the publishing house St Sergius Press, which publishes catechetical works and theological studies. Among its books is a small catechism, Orthodox Basics (2024), with illustrations by the iconographer Aidan Hart.

Glasgow: Holy Archangel Gabriel

Since 2013 the community has prayed in a crypt beneath Kelvin West church, the former Wellington church on University Avenue, made available by the Church of Scotland. Fr Augustine restored it completely and turned it into a chapel. The chapel is dedicated to the Archangel Gabriel and to the memory of Archbishop Gabriel of Comana, who led the Paris archdiocese from 2003 to 2013.

The community is supported solely by the gifts of its members and sees its work as a support for Orthodox witness in Scotland. Its rector and confessor is the vicar bishop of the archdiocese, its only priest, assisted by a deacon.

Exeter: St Pancras and St Sergius

The community serves twice a month, at 10:30, in the church of St Pancras on High Street. St Pancras was a young martyr of Rome, long venerated in England. The community gathers the Orthodox of the south-west of England. Among its faithful are English, Greek, Lithuanian, Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Belarusian, Estonian and American people.

Hieromonk Porphyrios, one of the founders of the community, has served as a priest for fifty years. On the deanery’s website he appears as acting dean. In May 2025 friends of the community brought from Russia an icon of St Pancras, painted by Svetlana Vesnina, and placed it in the church.

Sheffield: St Silouan and All Saints of Britain and Ireland

The community was founded in September 2020, with the blessing of Metropolitan Jean, and is shepherded by Archpriest Timothy (Curtis). In 2021 Fr Timothy was the dean. The community usually gathers on the first, third and fifth Sundays of the month.

Its patrons are St Silouan the Athonite, the Russian monk of the Holy Mountain who reposed in 1938, commemorated on 24 September, and All Saints of Britain and Ireland, commemorated on the third Sunday after Pentecost. On its website the community gathers prayers and guidance for those who pray at home.

Northampton: St Anne

The parish gathers in a former community centre on Cattlemarket Road, on the southern edge of the town, by the River Nene. The building does not yet look like a church. On Sundays the Liturgy is served at 10:30. On Mondays at 19:00 the faithful gather for the Jesus Prayer, and on Wednesdays at the same hour for Vespers.

The services are mostly in English, following the Old Calendar. During the service the faithful say the Lord’s Prayer, each in their own language.

Norwich: St John the Theologian

The community was founded in 1982, when it belonged to the Diocese of Sourozh, by Hegumen David (Meyrick) of the church of St Seraphim in Walsingham, together with Metropolitan Anthony (Bloom). In 1983 Fr Patrick (Hodson) was ordained as its priest. From 1986 to 2009 the community prayed in the old medieval church of St John de Sepulchre, called in those years the church of St John the Theologian.

Today it gathers in a hall of the Methodist church on Chapelfield Road. Since 2018, after Fr Patrick’s retirement, it has been shepherded by Fr Julian (Sadowski). The services are sung mostly in English, with a little Slavonic.

Walsingham: Skete of the Mother of God “Unexpected Joy”

The skete is on the High Street of Little Walsingham and is kept by Mother Melangell. From here the archdiocese’s annual pilgrimage to Walsingham is prepared.

A bishop from Scotland

On 4 October 2025 the extraordinary general assembly of the archdiocese elected as vicar bishop Hegumen Augustine (McBeth), rector of the Glasgow community. Patriarch Kirill and the Synod of the Russian Church confirmed the election on 30 October. On 14 December 2025, in the cathedral on rue Daru, Metropolitan Jean consecrated him bishop with the title of Taldom, together with Archbishop Simon of Brussels and Bishop Simeon of Domodedovo. His relatives and many faithful from the Glasgow community came to the consecration. Reports of the consecration presented him as the first Scot by birth to become an Orthodox bishop since the Great Schism.

His election followed the archdiocese’s own order, which preserves the way of governance established by the Moscow Council of 1917–1918. Under Constantinople, the vicar bishops of the archdiocese were elected by the Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate; this is how Jean too had been elected, in 2015. The patriarchal gramota of 2019, by which the archdiocese was received under Moscow, now gives its assembly the right to elect its vicar bishops. A gramota is a solemn letter by which the patriarch decides or confirms something. The list of candidates is drawn up by the ruling bishop, after consulting the vicar bishops and the council of the archdiocese. The Patriarch may change it, and the Synod of the Russian Church confirms the election. The gramota also provides that decisions of the archdiocese’s church court may be appealed to the Supreme Church Court of the Moscow Patriarchate. The archdiocese’s own rules thus remain within the Russian Church.

Bishop Augustine was born in Glasgow. He is the Orthodox chaplain of the University of Glasgow, the first in its history, that is, the Orthodox priest appointed to care for its students. In 2014 Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware) called him to be the Orthodox chaplain of the island of Iona, from which St Columba brought the Gospel to Scotland in the sixth century. Iona has long been regarded as the cradle of Scottish Christianity. His ministry covers the whole archdiocese: in 2026 he visited its communities in Norway and Germany.

A contested reception

On 17 December 2020, in Paris, Metropolitan Jean received into the Orthodox Church James Siemens, who took the name Jacob. Until then he had served as a Ukrainian Greek-Catholic priest, and before that he had been an Anglican priest. Fr Jacob made his confession, put on priestly vestments and concelebrated with the metropolitan. He was not ordained again. Asked about this in January 2021, he said that the decision had been taken without him. He knew only that inquiries had been made, so that everything would be as faithful to the canons as possible.

In the history of the Church, clergy coming from outside Orthodox communion have been received in different ways. Canon 8 of the First Ecumenical Council allowed, under certain conditions, Novatian clergy received into the Church to keep their clerical rank. The Novatians were a group that separated from the Church in the third century. Canon 19 of the same Council required that the followers of Paul of Samosata be baptised and that their clergy, if found worthy, be ordained. Some practices therefore receive such a cleric as a layman and ordain him after canonical examination, while others receive him in the rank he held. Orthodox jurisdictions have not always applied or understood them in the same way.

The archdiocese regarded Fr Jacob’s reception as an act of economy (oikonomia). Through economy the Church applies her rules pastorally, for the salvation of people, while remaining within her canonical and synodal authority. The archdiocese said that it had followed an ordinary practice of the Russian Church.

The Russian Church has long known the reception of Roman Catholic priests in their orders, after repentance, renunciation of the errors of their confession and confession of the Orthodox faith. St Philaret of Moscow composed a rite for receiving a Roman Catholic priest, in which Baptism, Chrismation and ordination are not repeated. St Alexis Toth, a Greek-Catholic priest, was received into Orthodoxy in 1891, in America, together with his faithful, and continued his ministry as an Orthodox priest without a new ordination. After him many other Greek-Catholic priests came to Orthodoxy. The Orthodox Church in America canonised him in 1994.

In 1898, in St Petersburg, Mar Yonan, a bishop of the Assyrian Church of the East, and several of his clergy were received in their orders, through confession of faith and vesting. The Church of the East had been outside communion with the Churches of the Roman Empire since the Christological disputes of the fifth century.

In 2010, in Moscow, Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev) received into Orthodoxy Gabriel Bunge, a Benedictine monk and priest, known for his studies of Evagrius Ponticus. The reports at the time do not describe the rite of reception. The archdiocese cites him as an example of reception by vesting and concelebration. It also says that St Tikhon, Metropolitan Evlogy and Archbishop Georges (Wagner) of Paris received Catholic priests in the same way. The ROCOR diocese did not accept this argument.

In 1927 Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky), the first primate of ROCOR, wrote that through economy even Anglican clergy may be received in their orders. He held that grace is given to them at the moment they are received into the Church. Later, the ROCOR line became stricter. In 1971 the ROCOR Council of Bishops decided on a stricter practice for receiving those coming from outside the Church: as a rule by Baptism, and otherwise only in case of great need and with the express blessing of the bishop. The decision concerned the reception of laity and did not speak of the reception of clergy. The decision in a particular case belongs to the church authority entitled to take it and remains under the canonical and synodal responsibility of the Church.

On 23 January 2021, Bishop Irenei, the ROCOR ruling bishop for Great Britain and Western Europe, judged Fr Jacob’s reception to be wholly uncanonical. By a directive he forbade his clergy to concelebrate with him and with any cleric or institution of the archdiocese in the British Isles. He asked ROCOR faithful not to receive the Sacraments in the churches of the archdiocese. The bishop called his decision a temporary measure, for as long as needed for the higher church authority to examine the matter.

The disagreement grew in the summer of 2021. Several ROCOR clergy, among them those of the Colchester parish and clergy of the ROCOR Western Rite vicariate, asked to move to Rue Daru without a letter of release. The Western Rite comprises Orthodox parishes that worship according to liturgical orders of Western origin. The archdiocese received thirteen clergy on 23 August and announced the reception on 3 September. The ROCOR diocese protested.

The usual order, laid down as early as canon 16 of the First Ecumenical Council, forbids the reception of clergy who leave their bishop without his consent. In a statement issued in October 2021 with the blessing of Metropolitan Jean, the archdiocese argued that a letter of release is not required when two church structures are no longer in canonical union with each other. Bishop Irenei’s directive was regarded there as a rupture of communion, which only ROCOR could heal. The archdiocese also recalled that ROCOR had itself received parishes coming from the Ecumenical Patriarchate without such letters. This was the argument put forward in defence of the transfers, not an interpretation accepted by both sides. The ROCOR Synod examined the matter on 8 and 9 December 2021 and called uncanonical Metropolitan Jean’s claim to have received ROCOR clergy without a letter of release.

In November 2021 Metropolitan Mark of Berlin, the ROCOR ruling bishop for Germany, said that he had recently forbidden his clergy to concelebrate with clergy of the archdiocese. Commenting on this ban in December 2021, the Patriarchal Exarch for Western Europe, Metropolitan Anthony of Korsun, said that it should not be understood as a break in communion and that steps toward reconciliation were being taken. The statement concerned the wider tensions between ROCOR and the archdiocese and was not a decision on the Cardiff case. Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, then head of the Department for External Church Relations, expressed the hope that the difficulties would be overcome through dialogue.

On 10 February 2022 Metropolitan Jean annulled the reception of the clergy who had come from ROCOR, in order to preserve the peace, communion and unity of the Church. Bishop Irenei received the news with joy. The ROCOR communiqué of that time stressed that the diocese’s authority over these clergy had not been interrupted. On 28 February 2022 the ROCOR Synod confirmed the deposition of five former clergy of the Colchester parish, decided by the diocesan church court in October 2021. The annulment concerned the clergy who had come from ROCOR, not the reception of Fr Jacob.

The Cardiff case has remained open. Fr Jacob continues to serve in the archdiocese, which regards him as a cleric in good standing. The leadership of the ROCOR diocese has contested his reception. In the public sources examined up to 2 October 2026 we have found no synodal decision settling this case, nor any report that the ban has been lifted.

The archdiocese’s link with Moscow has meanwhile remained alive. On 16 September 2026 Metropolitan Anthony of Volokolamsk, who now heads the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, visited Metropolitan Jean in Paris. The communiqué on this meeting does not mention the Cardiff case.

Why ROCOR does not recognise Fr Jacob

The January 2021 directive explained why the ROCOR diocese considers his reception uncanonical. Fr Jacob had been received into Orthodoxy without Baptism and without Chrismation. He had then been acknowledged as an Orthodox priest without having received Orthodox ordination. For this reason, the ROCOR diocese does not recognise him as a priest.

This manner of reception has old precedents in the Russian Church, but ROCOR does not accept it in Fr Jacob’s case. Economy belongs to the judgement of the bishop who uses it and is not imposed on other bishops as a rule. The archdiocese follows the old Russian practice, which, it says, is also followed by the Moscow Patriarchate. ROCOR applies a stricter rule in this case. The directive shows that, for ROCOR, a cleric coming from outside the Church needs Orthodox ordination, and that the reception in Paris does not take its place. The two structures of the same Church thus apply different rules. In Cardiff, where both have parishes, the difference has become an open disagreement.

The old precedents do not, however, close the question. They concern clergy ordained in the Roman Catholic Church, the Greek-Catholic Church or the Church of the East. Fr Jacob’s path was longer: he was first an Anglican priest and only then a Greek-Catholic priest. The archdiocese received him as a Greek-Catholic priest, but the public sources examined do not say when and by whom he was ordained in the Greek-Catholic Church. Whether the old precedents fit such a path is precisely one of the points that can be contested.

ROCOR and the archdiocese are both in the Russian Church and in communion with each other. Communion means that they recognise each other as Church and partake of the same Chalice. It does not, however, oblige a bishop to accept every decision of another bishop. Each bishop answers for his own clergy and faithful and may consider a particular act of another hierarch uncanonical. The dispute therefore concerns the reception of a single cleric, not the archdiocese as a Church.

The difficulty arises because, for the archdiocese, Fr Jacob is a priest, and its clergy concelebrate with him. A ROCOR priest who concelebrated with them would, through them, enter into communion with him as well. This explains why the directive did not stop at Fr Jacob but covered all the clergy and institutions of the archdiocese in the British Isles. The archdiocese saw in it a rupture of communion. Of a similar ban in Germany, the Patriarchal Exarch said that it was not a break in communion between these two structures of the Moscow Patriarchate. Formally, they remain in communion, as parts of the same Church. In the British Isles, however, their communion is restricted in practice.

The dispute can last because both are self-governing within the Russian Church. ROCOR has this right through the Act of Canonical Communion of 2007, and the archdiocese through the gramota of 2019. Neither has authority over the other. Only the higher church authority of the Russian Church can decide between them. Bishop Irenei left the case to that authority, which has not pronounced publicly so far.

For those looking for a community

The deanery’s communities are small, and some do not serve every Sunday. Anyone wishing to go to one of them would do well first to look up the list of communities and priests on the deanery’s website and to let the priest know. Services are mostly held in English, so those who do not know Slavonic can also follow them. The calendar is not the same everywhere. As Fr Jacob said in 2021, the archdiocese lets each community decide whether to follow the Old or the New Calendar, and the cathedral in Paris follows the Old Calendar.

The dispute with ROCOR also has practical consequences. Faithful under the obedience of the ROCOR diocese that issued the ban follow the guidance of their ruling bishop. Faithful of other jurisdictions would do well to clarify matters with their own priest and, when needed, with their diocese, before receiving Communion in the communities of the archdiocese.

Walsingham

Walsingham, in the county of Norfolk, has been a place of pilgrimage to the Mother of God since the Middle Ages and is often called England’s Nazareth. In the village of Little Walsingham, within the church of the Anglican shrine, there is a small Orthodox chapel. It was used from 1941 by prisoners of war from Eastern Europe and by Polish soldiers stationed in England. The chapel was consecrated by Archbishop Sava of Grodno, first with the dedication of the icon of the Mother of God “of Perpetual Succour”. Later it received the dedication of the Life-Giving Spring, by which it is known today. After the war St Nikolai Velimirović, the Serbian hierarch who had passed through the camp at Dachau and had come to Walsingham to recover, served in it.

Today priests from several jurisdictions serve in the chapel. ROCOR’s work at Walsingham is entrusted to Hieromonk Mark (Underwood), the ROCOR parish priest in Cardiff. Also in the village is the pilgrimage chapel of St Seraphim, in a former railway station. It was from the church of St Seraphim in Walsingham that Hegumen David (Meyrick) had set out in 1982 when he founded the Norwich community. Mother Melangell’s skete stands on the same High Street of the village.

Every autumn the archdiocese makes a pilgrimage here for the feast of the icon of Our Lady of Walsingham. On 19 September 2026 the day began with the Liturgy served by Fr Julian Sadowski of Norwich. After a shared meal, the pilgrims set off for the neighbouring village of Houghton St Giles, from which the procession with the Cross was to start. They meant to get there by bus, but that day the buses did not stop in the village because of another large pilgrimage. So they all walked, joyfully. In the procession they prayed above all for Christians persecuted for their faith. Along the way they sang, in English and in Slavonic, “Holy God” and “Most Holy Theotokos, save us”. The procession passed by the chapel of St Seraphim and stopped at Mother Melangell’s skete. The day ended with the Paraklesis of Our Lady of Walsingham and the Akathist, sung by all.

In her account of the pilgrimage, Mother Melangell thanks those who helped with the preparations. Among them are faithful from the parish of the Transfiguration in Great Walsingham, which belongs to the Thyateira deanery of the Russian tradition, and from the ROCOR parish of St Alexander Nevsky in Norwich, founded in 2016. The city of Norwich thus has two communities of Russian tradition, one of the archdiocese and one of ROCOR.

In November 2025 the wonderworking Kursk Icon of the Mother of God, kept by ROCOR and called the Hodegetria of the Russian Diaspora because it accompanied the wanderings of the Russian emigration, came to Walsingham. According to the programme published by the archdiocese, on the evening of 13 November the Akathist was sung at Mother Melangell’s skete. The next morning the icon was received at the Anglican shrine, and in the Orthodox chapel the Liturgy was served, which the ROCOR parish in Cardiff had announced as its own service.

Conclusion

Rue Daru has a small presence in Great Britain. Its faithful come from many nations. Its communities serve mostly in English and honour the saints of the land in which they live. Since 2025 they have had a Scottish bishop, and in 2026 the Cardiff parish bought a church building which it wants to prepare for Orthodox worship.

The deanery lives its life within its archdiocese, part of the Russian Church, while some liturgical ties with the ROCOR diocese remain affected by a canonical disagreement. Its healing calls for church clarification and reconciliation between the hierarchs who care for these faithful. The help they give one another at Walsingham does not take the place of this clarification, but it shows that disagreement need not become enmity.

Sources

The archdiocese and the British deanery
– Archdiocese of Russian tradition: archeveche.eu, including the account of the Walsingham pilgrimage of 19 September 2026 and the programme of the visit of the Kursk icon
– Archdiocese: biography of Metropolitan Jean and the patriarchal gramota of 2019
– Deanery of Great Britain and Ireland: archdiocesegbi.com and the list of communities
– The deanery that remained under Constantinople: thyateira-deanery.uk, the list of parishes and communities (consulted on 3 October 2026) and the 2019 announcements
– Metropolitan Jean on the return to Moscow: OrthoChristian, March 2020
– The 2019 union: OrthoChristian, November 2019

The communities
– Cardiff: orthodoxcardiff.com, the appeal for the new church (consulted on 2 October 2026), St Sergius Press
– Centre for Orthodox Formation: Ancient Faith, May 2026
– Glasgow: glasgoworthodox.org
– Exeter: stpancrasofrome.org
– Sheffield: orthodoxchurchsheffield.com
– Northampton: saintannesnorthampton.org and the parish page on the archdiocese’s website
– Norwich: orthodoxchurch-norwich.co.uk and St John de Sepulchre

Bishop Augustine
– Department for External Church Relations: consecration of the Bishop of Taldom
– OrthoChristian: Scottish priest consecrated bishop

The London parish, the Sourozh crisis and the separation of 2019
– Wikipedia: Russian Orthodox Diocese of Sourozh and Basil Osborne
– OrthodoxWiki: Diocese of Sourozh and Basil (Osborne) of Amphipolis
– Moscow Patriarchate: Situation in the Diocese of Sourozh, May 2006
– Religion in Eastern Europe: report of the Moscow Synod’s commission on the Diocese of Sourozh, 2006
– Robert Collins: An Island of Holy Rus, PhD thesis, Birkbeck, 2009
– Orthodox Church in America: UK diocesan crisis tests Church’s mission to all, June 2006
– Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh Foundation: chronology of Metropolitan Anthony’s life
– Department for External Church Relations: 2010 communiqué on Bishop Basil (Osborne), which also recalls the decision of 16 May 2007
– Wikipedia: Archdiocese of Russian Orthodox Churches in Western Europe and Joining of the Archdiocese to the Moscow Patriarchate
– Wikipedia: Act of Canonical Communion with the Moscow Patriarchate

The reception of Fr Jacob and the relationship with ROCOR
– OrthoChristian: interview with Fr Jacob, January 2021
– Archdiocese: statement on the reception of clergy, October 2021
– Archimandrite Ambrose (Pogodin): On the Question of the Order of Reception of Persons into the Orthodox Church, chapter 2
– Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky): Why Anglican Clergy Could Be Received in Their Orders, 1927
– Wikipedia: Alexis Toth
– OrthodoxWiki: Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Urmia and Gabriel (Bunge)
– ROCOR Studies: Abun Mar Elia of Supurgansk and Urmia, on the reception of 1898
– St Vladimir’s Seminary: Renowned Benedictine Monk and SVS Press Author Joins Orthodox Church, 2010
– Orthodox Exchange: biography of Fr Jacob
– ROCOR Studies: decision of the ROCOR Council of 15/28 September 1971
– OrthoChristian: Moscow hierarchs comment on the situation between ROCOR and the Paris Archdiocese, December 2021
– OrthoChristian: ROCOR Synod discusses situation with the Paris Archdiocese, December 2021
– OrthoChristian: Reception of ROCOR clergy into Paris Archdiocese without a release is rescinded, February 2022
– ROCOR diocese: communiqué of February 2022
– OrthoChristian: Several ROCOR clergy in England defrocked, March 2022
– Orthodox House: the meeting of 16 September 2026

Walsingham
– ROCOR parish in Cardiff: on the Orthodox chapel and Archbishop Sava of Grodno
– ROCOR diocese: feast of the Walsingham chapel, 2023