Today they sent me a quote from one anti-church resource: “Most of the [African] priests who have transferred to the ROC are old calendarists who are in schism with world Orthodoxy, as well as various violators of canonical norms previously banned from ministry or defrocked. Metropolitan Gregory of Cameroon from the AOC told about this. He said ironically that Moscow now resembles Rommel in Africa: it has pushed itself into a place where it does not understand anything, and therefore it will collapse.”

Judging by this commentary by Met. Gregory, the Alexandrian Greeks still do not believe and cannot comprehend the scale of their catastrophe. However, it is not surprising given their monstrous isolation from their own African flock, when most of the Greek bishops do not even live in Africa. Among the African clergy accepted into the Russian Orthodox Church, there is not a single old calendarist and not a single defrocked one. These are all clerics of the Alexandrian Patriarchate. As far as I understand, about a third of the total number of their clerics. At the same time, there are even more willing to go.

But, by the way, Metropolitan Gregory gave a good idea about the African Old Calendarists. The arrival of the Russian Church in Africa may indeed serve to heal the numerous schisms into which many African priests and laity have fled from the “wise Greeks”, “understanding Africa” over the past years. There, sometimes whole deaneries fell away. However, this is a task for the distant future, and in the near future there is a lot of work to create a healthy church structure, covering almost the entire continent. This is a very difficult task that will take a lot of time and effort. But Orthodoxy in Africa has prospects, and very serious ones.

My acquaintance with local realities convinced me that the modern Greek mission in Africa is largely a decoration for show exploited by a handful of Greek bishops in order to collect money from Greeks from other countries. Not all Greek bishops are like that, but many are. Africans are not fools and they see it too. Fatigue from the Greeks has been accumulating there for a long time. Africa deserves the best.

Priest George Maximov, Telegram