Photo credit: mkrf.ru
The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) is one of the fastest growing churches in the world, the head of the Synodal Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk says. He recalled that only three decades ago there were six thousand parishes of the ROC and now there are forty thousand of them. And the number of monasteries has increased from twenty to almost a thousand, TASS reports.
According to the Metropolitan, the expansion of church building on such a scale is based on the “request of the people”. Nobody erects churches anywhere and doesn’t open monasteries by any order from above. They are built where people want them to be, where a parish or monastic communities appear.
The metropolitan recalled that a few days ago the ROC was replenished with almost a hundred parishes of the “Russian exarchate”. Russkiy Mir reported that last month the ROC received an appeal from the head of the “Russian exarchate” Archbishop John (Renneto) and a number of parishes requesting accession to the Moscow Patriarchate. The decision was a response to the abolition of the exarchate by the Patriarch of Constantinople. The Synod of the Russian Church responded positively to the appeal of Archbishop John and other clergy of the "Russian exarchate." According to the ROC, most of the clergy followed their head and also expressed a desire to enter the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate.
Patriarch Kirill believes that the reunification of the “Russian exarchate” of the West European parishes with the Russian Orthodox Church puts an end to a long-term schism.
Russkiy Mir
