About the Diocese

Life and History of Our Diocese

Home of the Orthodox Diaspora in Western Europe and the British Isles

The Diocese of Great Britain and Western Europe has been the home of the Church Abroad’s presence in Europe since the beginnings of the Church Abroad itself, and today maintains its traditions of fostering every dimension of the life of the Orthodox Diaspora across eleven countries.

Our Diocesan life encompasses two broad territories — on the one hand, the British Isles (comprising the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, together with the Republic of Ireland), and on the other, continental Western Europe (including France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Monaco and Portugal) — which have been at the heart of the Orthodox Diaspora for centuries. This broad territory means that the Diocese, in addition to being multinational, is also multilingual, with parishes serving and communicating in English, French, Russian, Italian, Spanish, German, Dutch and Welsh.

The Diocesan Cathedral, dedicated to the Nativity of the Theotokos and the Holy Royal Martyrs, is in London and is the principal cathedra of the Bishop of London and Western Europe, who governs the Diocese with aid of his vicar, the Bishop of Vevey. The Chancellery of the Diocese is located in Wallasey in the north of England and, at the direction of the Bishop, coordinates the administration of the Diocese as a whole. Given the extent of the Diocese’s territory, the customary work of its Diocesan Council is augmented by two regional councils — one for the British Isles and one for Continental Western Europe — which permit a dedicated focus on the pastoral and missionary needs of each broad region.

The administrative structure of our Church Abroad’s presence in Europe has changed several times over the course of the past century, with these territories sometimes governed as a single unit (a singular diocese), sometimes as vicarial regions within a broader diocese, and sometimes as separate dioceses. While for the previous thirty years the ‘British Diocese’ and the ‘European Diocese’ were distinct entities, from September 2018 the Holy Synod once again united them together under one Ruling Bishop, creating a common scope for mission, pastoral care and life as the Church Abroad continues her growth into a new century.

The signing of the ‘Act of Canonical Communion’ in May 2007 brought into renewed fraternal communion the two parts of the Russian Orthodox Church that had been separated since the time of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia — restoring the bonds of fraternal love between the church within Russia and the many hundreds of parishes of the Church Abroad, scattered across the world, which remain within her autonomous structure. In 2022 we celebrated fifteen years since this God-provided restoration of spiritual and eucharistic unity, and marked with joy the fraternal relationships that now exist between our Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) and the parishes and dioceses of the Patriarchate of Moscow, also located throughout the world.

Our Church Abroad is a self governing church with its own Synod of Bishops, headquartered in New York. Its First Hierarch is His Eminence Metropolitan Nicholas of Eastern America and New York, and the ROCOR includes Dioceses in the United States of America, Canada, Central and South America, Australia and New Zealand — and of course our own Diocese of Great Britain and Western Europe, together with our sister Diocese of Germany, which also covers Austria and the Scandinavian nations. In all our territories, the Church Abroad bears witness to traditions inherited from Holy Russia’s pre-revolutionary history, with its own liturgical and pastoral customs that form an important, unique part of the vibrant witness of Orthodox unity throughout the world. Its century-long history as a church in the Diaspora means that we are wholly committed to the life of Orthodoxy that embraces the cultures in which we live in various parts of the world, as a local Orthodox presence in each place. The Church Abroad has always had, and continues to have, a vibrant missionary spirit, and seeks both to support Orthodox Christians outside Russia, and to spread the Gospel of Christ to the peoples of a wide range of countries, drawing all people into the Church of Christ, the Faith of the Apostles, and the Life of the Holy Fathers.

We maintain a special section of this website dedicated to the History of the Church Abroad, which we invite you to peruse for further information.