Patriarch Theodore II of Alexandria, who has led the Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria since 2004, has issued an encyclical letter denouncing the Moscow Patriarchate after the latter created Russian Orthodox ecclesiastical structures in Africa and received over 100 Alexandrian clergy into the Russian church.
Both patriarchates are among the autocephalous churches that make up Eastern Orthodoxy.
“The Russian Church, wanting to increase its power and prestige in the Orthodox world, using secular power and —sometimes —violence, began to trample and ‘enslave’ neighboring Orthodox churches,” Patriarch Theodore wrote. The Moscow Patriarchate’s recent action “is utterly hostile to our Patriarchate, as it is contrary to many other canons which forbid one church from violating the borders of another.”