Patriarch Theodore of Alexandria and All Africa has issued a harsh response to Coptic Patriarch Tawandros II, following the latter’s decision to cede a church of his Patriarchate in Cairo to the Church of Russia to serve the liturgical needs of Russian Orthodox, orthodoxtimes reports.

In a letter to the Coptic Patriarch, the Patriarch of Alexandria addressed him in a particularly high tone and expressed his disappointment at this move, writing about the “direct interference in serious internal matters of the Orthodox Church” that “interferes with my direct administrative and pastoral jurisdiction as the Orthodox Archbishop of Alexandria and as Pope and Patriarch of the Orthodox Church of All Africa on matters that concern purely intra-Orthodox relations.”

He wrote to the Coptic Patriarch that “the Church of Russia for its own purposes unilaterally disavows any other Orthodox Church that has recognized the autocephaly granted by the Ecumenical Patriarchate to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine… However, the Russian Church has not only stopped at verbal repudiation, but has gone further by illegally encroaching on our spiritual jurisdiction, seeking to buy off clergy and parishes in Africa, for vindictive reasons and selfish purposes”.

“The fact that you have ignored the Pan-Orthodox Church of Alexandria in a matter concerning its relationship with another Orthodox Church within its jurisdiction is a grave slip and an act of ingratitude to our Patriarchate, which stood by the Coptic Church in difficult moments, such as years ago, when a Coptic pseudo-Patriarch from America had appeared”, Patriarch Theodore says.