Metropolitan of Klin, Cairo and North Africa, Patriarchal Exarch of All Africa Leonid (Gorbachev) is confident that the decisions of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church on the formation of the structure of the Russian Church on the African continent will already go down in the history of Ecumenical Orthodoxy. “I don’t remember anything like that in recent history,” lord Leonid noted while taking part in the “Strategy with Anna Shafran” on December 30, 2021.

As the Metropolitan recalled, these events began in 2019, when the Patriarch of Alexandria “supported a non-canonical grouping of people, not even church ones, who do not have ordination.”

“It was a surprise for us, we did not expect such a blow in the back; I was exarch under the Patriarch of Alexandria, how much good has been done, I do not want to say.

How much was done personally for Patriarch Theodore, what funds were directed, God alone knows, so that our clergy brothers could carry out their activities. We exhorted, warned, gave time to Patriarch Theodore so that he would not go further, would not serve with the schismatics physically. He knows Odessa, lived there, said if you break my heart, you will find Ukraine there. And he made a coup in the air,” said the hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Since 2019, there have been more and more applications for admission to the ROC by African clerics. “Now officially we already have appeals of 102 clergymen, together with their parishes, flock, they have been ordained, they are suffering from what is happening on the African continent. The Orthodox Church is not the one that would have abandoned them,” emphasized Metropolitan Leonid.

As previously reported, on December 29, 2021, the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church decided to create its own structure in Africa and accept more than 100 clerics of the Alexandrian Patriarchate into the Russian Church.