By Bishop Irenei of London and Western Europe, 2025

The following study of the Hierarchs of our Diocese was composed by our current Ruling Bishop, in order to help foster a deeper understanding of the century-long history of the Diocese and those whom the Lord has called to shepherd it.[*]

In Western Europe and the British Isles, diocesan life — that is, parish life structured into some form of concrete diocesan oversight — has existed since the origins of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia herself. Following the tragic Revolution in Russia in 1917 and the Civil War of 1918-1920, the ecclesiastical presence in southern Russia (which was for a time able to remain under the protection of pious White Army officers) was consolidated into a provisional structure called the Supreme Ecclesiastical Administration (SEA), established at a council held in Stavropol from 5th / 18th to 11th / 24th May 1919. There, the autonomous governance of those parts of the Russian Orthodox Church that could remain free from spreading Bolshevik influence was already begun. Receiving the approbation of Patriarch St Tikhon via the recording of its decisions in the Synodal Register of the Patriarchate, the Supreme Ecclesiastical Administration strove to organise and structure the life of the parts of the Russian Orthodox Church that could no longer maintain connection with the synodal centre in Moscow — and these included not only those regions internal to Russia in which faithful were fleeing, often in chaotic circumstances, the advancing atheistic forces, but also those outreaches of the Church into the Diaspora that had already existed, in some cases for many generations. At the final meeting of the Supreme Ecclesiastical Administration to take place within Russia itself, in October 1920 in Simferopol, specific provision for the governance of the Russian Orthodox communities in Europe was already formally made.

That session of the Supreme Ecclesiastical Administration took place while the hierarchs, clergy, faithful and White Army soldiers comprising its broader community were already in retreat to the Crimea, fleeing the Bolshevik terror. It was to be later during this journey — which involved an enormous flotilla of more than 125 ships — that the holy Patriarch St Tikhon, who had already endorsed the existence of the Supreme Ecclesiastical Administration and confirmed all its formal decisions (including its restructuring and creation of dioceses, appointment of Hierarchs, and so on), went a step further. On 7th / 20th November 1920 he issued his Decree No. 362, which blessed with formal Patriarchal approbation the organisation of an autonomous Church structure and administration, to be comprised of those canonical hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church whose separation from the administration in Moscow made ongoing direct communication impossible. Writing in that Decree, the Patriarch declared: ‘If a diocese loses contact with the Supreme Central Ecclesiastical Administration, or the same [—Ed.: i.e. the Patriarch himself, together with the Holy Synod within Russia] for some reason discontinues its activities, then the Diocesan Bishop should unite with the Bishops in neighbouring dioceses in order to organise a higher body of ecclesiastical authority.’

This Patriarchal document would come to be considered the canonical charter for the further work of the Supreme Ecclesiastical Administration, and during the first two meetings of the SEA that took place ‘in evacuation’ — on the ship Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich during the crossing towards Constantinople in 1920 — it affirmed the necessity of ministering to the current and future refugees in ‘various parts of the world’. When the Administration was given refuge in Constantinople by Decree No. 9084 of the Constantinopolitan Patriarchate, one of its meetings (held in January 1921) reaffirmed its earlier decision to structure the administration of the Russian Orthodox Communities in Western Europe under its auspices, with Archbishop Evlogy (Georgievsky) at its head. A cleric in Paris (a certain Archpriest Jacob Smirnov) doubted the validity of the appointment and even of the SEA itself, and as such Archbishop Seraphim (Loukianov) of Finland — of whom much more will be said below — interceded in early March with the Patriarch in Moscow for clarification, and at the meeting of the Holy Synod on 26th March / 8th April 1921 both Patriarch St Tikhon and the Synod confirmed Archbishop Evlogy’s appointment by the January decision of the SEA, and by extension the right of the Supreme Ecclesiastical Administration to exist, function and make such appointments. The installation of Archbishop Evlogy to govern the European communities was carried out on 2nd / 15th April 1921 at the hands of Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky), head of the SEA who would shortly bear the title of First Hierarch of the Church Abroad, elevating the communities of Europe, already operating under its auspices since 1919, to the status of a formal Diocese.

Thus it was that the Russian Orthodox Diaspora in Europe was integrally a part of the canonical administration of the Russian Orthodox Church during the painful period of her hierarchs’ exile and evacuation from Russia and the canonical establishment of the Church abroad. When, in July 1921, the first meeting of the administration was held in Sremsky-Karlovtsy (in present-day Serbia), the SEA’s name was changed to ‘The Supreme Russian Church Ecclesiastical Administration Abroad’, for the first time formally including the moniker ‘Abroad’ in its self-identification — the full reality of the separation posed by the Bolshevik takeover in Russia now clearly understood. Patriarch St Tikhon in Moscow continued to bless and confirm the decisions taken by the Administration Abroad in its autonomy, as long as this remained possible for him (for example, affirming the Administration’s transformation of the Alaskan Vicariate into an independent diocese in July 1921, including selecting for itself a Bishop to govern the new See). When, in the years subsequent to the arrest of Patriarch St Tikhon in May 1922, those connections eventually became impossible, a Council of Bishops met again in Karlovtsy, at which the ‘Supreme Administration Abroad’ became the ‘Synod of the Russian Orthodox Bishops Abroad’: the very entity that continues to exist today as the self-governing Holy Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (generally abbreviated as ‘ROCOR’). In that establishing year, the Synod articulated fifteen dioceses that comprised its administration at the time; amongst these was Western Europe.[3]

Of course, this did not mean that it was only from 1922 (or, extending back into the SEA, from 1919) that there were Russian Orthodox parishes in Europe and the British Isles. In fact, at the time of the Revolution there were some fifty-five churches outside the Russian borders, the majority of which had been under the authority of the Metropolitan of St Petersburg. Most of these were in buildings that had been attached to imperial embassies and consulates, many of which (though certainly not all) would subsequently be closed when Bolshevik and then Soviet Russia ceased diplomatic ties with the European states (or vice-versa). Such, for example, were the origins of the now centuries-old parish in London (which has moved locations several times), as well as several of the parishes in France and Switzerland — which in administrative terms might trace the documentary origin of their current parish statutes to 1919, when all the parishes of the Russian Church were newly registered as such in accordance with the revised parochial statutes approved at the 1917-1918 council, but which in fact were functioning and recognised parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church for generations before.[4] There were some places (such as Geneva, Vevey, Florence) that had, long before, constructed beautiful temples. There were also a number of communities at popular travel, holiday and health destinations that had been frequented by Russians before the revolution — and especially by the Russian aristocracy and nobility, who would often endow the construction of churches in these places (the Diocese’s churches in Sanremo in Italy and along the Côte d’Azur in southern France are examples of still-extant parishes with such origins). But in their totality the number of these communities, and especially their lack of local archpastoral oversight, rendered them hardly able to support the enormous quantity of refugees that would arrive into Europe in the aftermath of the Civil War; and so the structuring of the European communities into a formal Diocese, which began in 1920, was an essential project of the Church Abroad from her foundation.

The man who was therefore the Diocese’s first Ruling Hierarch, Archbishop Evlogy, was born Basil Semyonovitch Georgievsky in April 1868 in Somovo, Voronezh. His father was a Priest and his mother from a churched family; under their influence the young Basil followed his parochial education at the Belevo Theological School in Tula (the region of his mother’s lineage) with seminary studies in the same region, completing these in 1888 and moving on to the Moscow Theological Academy, from which he would graduate in 1892, having written his dissertation on St Tikhon of Zadonsk. Basil was tonsured a monk in February 1895 by Bishop Irenei (Horde) of Tula and Belevsky, receiving the name Evlogy; he was ordained Hierodeacon immediately thereafter, and Hieromonk two weeks later. Eight years later, in 1903, he was consecrated to the Holy Episcopacy and given the title Bishop of Lublin, Vicar Bishop of the Warsaw Diocese. From July 1905 he was Ruling Bishop in the Diocese of Kholm, and was elevated to the rank of Archbishop in 1912. In 1914 he was transferred to Volhynia (in present-day Ukraine) with the title Archbishop of Volhynia and Zhytomyr. When it became impossible for him to re-enter his diocese after his arrest in December 1918 (and subsequent release), he moved multiple times, and eventually arrived in Belgrade.

Upon his taking up the obedience of effective Ruling Bishop in Western Europe from 1921, Archbishop Evlogy acted as a regular Hierarch of the Administration Abroad, exercising his office of ‘temporary administrator’ of the parishes in Western Europe first from Germany, then, from September / October 1922, from Paris.[4c] He was elevated to the rank of Metropolitan in 1922, and served as a regular member of the Synod thereafter, voting on all its central resolutions, which included those considering the restructuring of the administration of the European communities.[4d] But it would be precisely such questions that would eventually lead Metropolitan Evlogy into schism from the Church Administration.

A tendency towards consolidating power under himself began to be noticed by other members of the Holy Synod, together with attempts to overstep the limits of his canonical authority. Metropolitan Evlogy attempted a large-scale restructuring of Europe into numerous new ecclesiastical provinces and vicariates between 1922-1923; in the end, the Synod approved only four: in 1924 the Western European Diocese was structured to include four discrete internal provinces, for which Vicar Bishops would be appointed (as well as the broader diocesan territory covering Europe as a whole): Germany (which would be centred in Potsdam[5]), Nice and Southern France, Prague and Czechoslovakia, and the United Kingdom. However, the tendency towards consolidating authority continued, and in response the Synod in 1926 transformed the Vicariate of Potsdam into an independent German Diocese, partially in an attempt to curb Metropolitan Evlogy’s activities. He responded by breaking away from the Synod and Church Administration in June of that year, initiating a schism that would endure for the rest of the twentieth century and beyond it, with a group of Hierarchs (including the recently-appointed Vicar Bishops of Nice and Prague[6]) and clergy following him. A tragic consequence of this personal departure was the creation of division within, and even splitting apart of, several communities in Europe — including the ancient community in London, as well as many in France.

Metropolitan Evlogy reposed in the Lord in Paris in 1946, having a short time previously been received into the Moscow Patriarchate after multiple jurisdictional changes in the preceding decades (to Moscow in 1926/7, 1931 to Constantinople, and back to Moscow in 1946). Though his legacy was not, ultimately, a happy one (certainly from the perspective of the Church Abroad), the Diocese of Great Britain and Western Europe rightly acknowledges his place in its earliest history, in that most tumultuous period of the immediate aftermath of the Revolution. It is one of the great happinesses of the early twenty-first century that the schism begun in this earliest period was at last overcome.[7]

He became an assistant professor in the Ufa Seminary upon his graduation from the Kazan Academy, and in 1907 was elevated to the dignity of Archimandrite and took up the role of Rector of the Taurida Seminary. His academic labours continued, and in 1911 he accepted his third teaching appointment as Rector of the Seminary in Saratov, the town of his birth. Consecrated to the Holy Episcopacy in 1914, he was appointed Bishop of Serdobolsk, Vicar Bishop of the Diocese of Finland. Then, in 1918, following his participation in the ‘1917-1918 Council’, Bishop Seraphim was appointed as Bishop of Finland. He was elevated to the dignity of Archbishop in 1920.

The general chaos of the post-revolutionary period as it related to the clergy and ecclesiastical structures of the Russian Orthodox Diaspora, with the tendency for groups — often feeling the disarray of imposed isolation from their homelands and the Church structures they had known, and frequently engaging in what would come to be known as ‘jurisdiction hopping’ as they sought stability wherever they believed they might find it (sometimes with canonical blessings to do so, though oftentimes in defiance of canonical practices) — did not leave Finland untouched. Members of the longstanding Orthodox community there, which had been under the canonical governance of the Russian Orthodox Church, sought to join the Patriarchate of Constantinople in the years following Finland’s independence from Russia in 1917; and when this was eventually enacted in 1923, Archbishop Seraphim protested, refusing to recognise Bishop Herman (Ava), whom Constantinople had appointed into the territory without historical-canonical basis. Archbishop Seraphim finally had to leave Finland under pressure from the civil authorities, who for political reasons endorsed Constantinople’s structure in the newly-independent country. He arrived in England and was appointed Rector of the parish in London, becoming Vicar Bishop to Metropolitan Evlogy from 1924.

After the break between Metropolitan Evlogy and the Holy Synod in late 1926, Archbishop Seraphim remained faithful to the legitimate hierarchy, and the Holy Synod in turn entrusted him with the leadership of the Diocese of Western Europe. This was at first undertaken provisionally, from January 1927-1928, in the immediate aftermath of Metropolitan Evlogy’s departure. Archbishop Seraphim began his reign from London, the Holy Synod having given him discretion as to whether he might remain there or move to Paris; but by the end of the year had relocated to the latter in order to be amongst the largest group of Russian Orthodox emigres in Europe. At the Council of Bishops in 1928 he was formally appointed as Archbishop of Paris and Western Europe.

Archbishop Seraphim’s strong stand against the canonically-questionable events in Finland, as well as his demonstration of stability in the face of the divisive actions of his predecessor in Europe, gave him a spiritual authority that he wielded for the benefit of the Western European Diocese. During his nearly twenty years as Ruling Hierarch, numerous parishes were founded in France, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy. At the Second All-Diaspora Council in 1938 in Sremski-Karlovtsi, Yugoslavia, Archbishop Seraphim’s many labours were acknowledged with his elevation to the rank of Metropolitan (the second time that the Church Abroad had elevated an Hierarch other than the First Hierarch to the rank of Metropolitan[8]), the Diocese itself being elevated thus to the status of Metropolitan District. It included territories across Europe, including Austria and Hungary, together with the nations that continue to comprise the Diocese today.

Unfortunately, the temptations of the ‘jurisdiction-hopping’ age were not yet over, and in August 1945 Metropolitan Seraphim negotiated to join the Moscow Patriarchate, taking with him a number of parishes. He was subsequently retired only four years later, in 1949, ultimately moving to the Soviet Union where he reposed in 1959 at the Gerbovetsky Monastery in what is now Moldova, at the age of 79. Subsequent to his departure, the Metropolitan Region operated once again along normal diocesan lines.

During his time as Archbishop and then Metropolitan of Western Europe, Vladyka Seraphim oversaw an active period of life in the Metropolitan District and its vicariates. Particularly notable were activities in the United Kingdom, France and Switzerland.

When post-revolutionary dangers required a relocation to the safer regions of southern Russia, and eventually to Yugoslavia (following a similar geographical path as the early administration of the Church Abroad herself), Fr Nicholas’ academic abilities proved useful as he became an instructor at the Bitol Seminary. In early 1928 he was elevated to the dignity of Archimandrite, and in the first part of the same year was sent to London to become the Parish Priest. On 17th / 30th June 1929, the feast of All Saints, he was consecrated as Bishop in London by the First Hierarch of the Church Abroad, Metropolitan Anthony, together with four assisting bishops (Archbishop Seraphim of Western Europe, Bishop Theophan of Kursk, Bishop Tikhon of Berlin, and Bishop Simon of Kremenetz), becoming Bishop of London, Vicar Bishop of Western Europe. He was the first Orthodox Hierarch to be consecrated within England since the Norman conquest, and the first to bear the title ‘Bishop of London’ since the ‘Great Schism’ of the eleventh century (the last being St Dunstan, Bishop of London from AD 959), which title — which would later give way for nearly a century, as we shall see, to the titles Bishop of Preston and Bishop of Richmond — was later restored in 2019.

Bishop Nicholas had the task of addressing the deep turmoil in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia in the United Kingdom following the schism in 1926 of Metropolitan Evlogy. Though Bishop Nicholas’ episcopacy was to prove short, he nevertheless managed to be highly successful in this labour, in part because he was an Hierarch much beloved by his flock — as he had been previously by students and staff in Serbia. The London Parish, which had been particularly affected by the schism, found renewed peace under the prayerful administration of its resident Bishop. He was known throughout the United Kingdom as a man of prayer, and a Hierarch who served the Divine Services with particular attention and spiritual focus.

Bishop Nicholas reposed in the Lord suddenly on the night of 27th September / 10th October 1932, from complications of appendicitis he contracted during travels to Yugoslavia in order to take part in a meeting of the Council of Bishops in Karlovtsy. His last words were, ‘Give me a candle to hold. I am dying. I want to go away to heaven’; and after taking the candle, he gave up his soul. It is thus that one of the most fondly-remembered Hierarchs of the United Kingdom — indeed, one of the outstanding clerics of the Church Abroad in this trying period — came to be buried by the walls of the Church of the Iveron Mother of God in Belgrade, beneath an icon of his heavenly patron, the Holy Hierarch St Nicholas of Myra and Lycia. His loss was acutely felt in the United Kingdom, which would not have a resident Bishop again until 1950, and which in the interim existed as a Deanery of the European Diocese.

The project of creating a Vicarial region for southern France, which had begun in 1924 with the appointment of Archbishop Vladimir of Nice, seemed to have come to a swift end in 1926 when he departed into schism with Metropolitan Evlogy. However, during the reign of Metropolitan Seraphim it was rekindled — though, again, for a short-lived period — in the person of Bishop Gregory (Ostroumov).

Born the son of a clergyman in 1856 in Russia, Gregory Ostroumov studied in St Petersburg, both at the Seminary (1876-1879) and the Academy (1879-1883). He was an exception to the otherwise standard pattern of clergy arriving into Europe consequent to the Revolution and Civil War in Russia, and had in fact served in Europe since well before the Revolution, first as Reader in Karlsruhe (from 1883-1885), and from 1885 as Priest in Schwerin. The church in Schwerin was in fact the domestic chapel of the Grand Duchess Anastasia Mikhailovna, who had married the Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin; here, as in so many other places, the monarchist devotion of the Orthodox emigration had forged strong ties with local royal and aristocratic families, which often served to provide endowments for the building of churches, or, as here, the possibility of converting rooms in stately homes into places of worship.

Fr Gregory’s priestly career was lengthy and distinguished. He was awarded the kamilavka in 1892, the Gold Cross in 1893, became Archpriest in 1895, and the mitre was lain upon his head in 1905. Already during this period (1890-1905) he was associated with the southern French city of Cannes, where he served at a house church in the winter months — Cannes being one of those places where Russians would often travel in winter ‘for reasons of health’. It was by Fr Gregory’s suggestion that a committee was established to build a proper church in Cannes, a project financially supported by the Grand Duke Michael Mikhailovich and brought to completion with the church’s consecration in 1894. Fr Gregory was appointed its Rector.

After the Revolution and Civil War, and the consolidation of the parishes in France, including Cannes, under the administration of the Church Abroad as had been directed by Patriarch St Tikhon, Archpriest Gregory became a faithful cleric of the newly-organised administration. When the Evlogian schism of 1926 divided communities, he remained steadfast. A few years later, in 1929, aged 73, the Synod awarded him the highest Priestly rank in the Orthodox Church: that of Protopresbyter.

Fr Gregory had been widowed twelve years earlier in 1917, which left him eligible for consideration for the Holy Episcopacy; and in 1936, in deference to his long service to the Church, he was consecrated as a Bishop at the age of 80. The Synod of Bishops issued a Decree creating a Vicariate of Cannes, which included the parishes in nearby Nice, Menton and Sanremo, which Bishop Gregory, with the title of Cannes and Marseilles, headed for the next nine years.

Unfortunately, though Bishop Gregory had resisted the divisions wrought by Metropolitan Evlogy, he was tempted into following Metropolitan Seraphim when the latter departed for the Moscow Patriarchate in 1945, and with that the Vicariate for southern France closed its second chapter. Fortunately, shortly before his death in 1947, Bishop Gregory was reconciled and returned to the Church Abroad.

The Priest who would become this first Administrator (and later, the first Bishop of Geneva) was born Leo Bartoshevich in St Petersburg in 1914. Like so many others in the early generations of the Diocese, and the Church Abroad as a whole, Leo’s family found themselves first in Southern Russia, and then in Yugoslavia, as they sought to stay ahead of advancing Bolshevik troops. Their father had fled to Yugoslavia already in 1920, while young Leo, together with his mother and his brother Andrei, the future Archbishop Anthony, stayed in Kiev until 1924 and then joined him there. It was in Belgrade that the brothers attended Russian primary and secondary school, which were followed with theological studies at the University of Belgrade’s Faculty of Theology. In due course the brothers entered the renowned Milkovo Monastery; while there, Leo assisted in the Holy Altar of the Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Church in Belgrade, while also attending the Belgrade School of Music.

Both brothers were tonsured as monks in Milkovo, Leo receiving the name Leonty. In 1941 he was ordained to the Diaconate, and in the same year to the Holy Priesthood; he subsequently spent the first years of his priestly service (1941-43) in Belgrade.

It was in 1943 that he was sent to Geneva to take up the obedience of Administrator of the Russian parishes in Switzerland, under the oversight of the Ruling Hierarch, Metropolitan Seraphim. He was beloved by the faithful there, and effective in his charge. In 1946, the year after Metropolitan Seraphim’s reign as Ruling Bishop came to an end, Fr Leonty was raised to the dignity of Archimandrite.

Thus it was that Switzerland, and Geneva in particular, began to be more central to the administration of the Diocese. The Cathedral of the Exaltation of the Cross in Geneva, which had been consecrated in 1866, had long been an important locale in the lives of Russian Orthodox Christians in Switzerland, while other parishes in the surrounding cities were even older (such as the parish in Bern, founded in 1817). But it was with the appointment of Fr Leonty as Administrator for Switzerland that the region would start to gain new prominence within the Diocese — ultimately leading to its creation as a Vicariate in 1950, and becoming the cathedral See of the Diocese as a whole from 1963.

In due course he became the cell attendant of Archbishop Nestor (Anisimov), joining him in various travels, including to Serbia and Ceylon. He was characteristically mission-minded and concerned for the conversion of all peoples, locals together with emigres, and such traits would mark out his entire ministerial life.

Fr Nathaniel was elevated to the dignity of Archimandrite upon his return to Harbin in 1936, and in 1939 he joined the Brotherhood of St Job of Pochaev in Ladomirovo (Carpatho-Russia). Five years later, in 1944, Archimandrite Nathaniel moved to Germany. There he established the ‘Committee for Russian Orthodox Emigrants’, with the charge to prevent the enforced deportation of Displaced Persons to the Soviet Union, which was a rising problem at the time; and through the labours of the Committee and Fr Nathaniel’s influence, thousands of refugees were able to obtain permission to emigrate to Europe. In addition to his reputation as a man of prayer and devoted missionary, he thus also gained the reputation of a fierce protector of the oppressed and persecuted.

Recognising the gifts of Archimandrite Nathaniel, the Holy Synod nominated him to succeed Metropolitan Seraphim as Ruling Bishop in Europe, and by decision of the Council of Bishops he was consecrated as Bishop of Brussels and Western Europe, the principal consecrator being Metropolitan Anastassy (Gribanovsky), who had succeeded Metropolitan Anthony as First Hierarch of the Church Abroad in 1936. The move of the See of the Diocese from Paris (both Metropolitan Evlogy and Metropolitan Seraphim had borne the title ‘of Paris’) effectively distanced the diocesan administration from what had become the increasingly tumultuous ecclesiastical environs of the French capital, which since the late-1920s had been home to more ‘jurisdiction-hopping’ and schism than any other city in Europe, a result of which was that churches that had been under the administration of the Synod of Bishops no longer were, some having changed jurisdictions multiple times in the intervening years and many now finding themselves under Constantinople. The Church Abroad was left with only the small parish in Meudon (on the outskirts of Paris), and utilised space in heterodox churches for various Divine Services (Vigils, for example, were held in a Reformed Church in Rue Erlanger). And Paris was, one must not forget, a city in considerable disarray after the conclusion of the Second World War. The move of the diocesan See to Brussels further recognised the Church Abroad’s growing presence in the Belgian capital, which in due course would emerge from its origins as a Russian Embassy Church to a flourishing Resurrection Parish and a Memorial Church dedicated to St Job the Long-Suffering, and with him to the memory of the martyred Imperial Family and all the victims of the Russian Revolution — both of which are still in existence, and both of which would be connected to future Bishops of the Diocese.

While Ruling Hierarch, Bishop Nathaniel continued his labours to obtain legal status for those seeking to emigrate to Europe. Perhaps most notable was his success in obtaining the necessary immigration documentation from the French authorities for the nuns of the Lesna Convent, who had been living in Yugoslavia, and who were thereafter able to relocate and reestablish the monastery in France.[10] He also made use of his education and evident gifts as a preacher, becoming known as a compelling apologist. He published regularly, with articles often found in the journals of the Russian Orthodox diaspora (a posthumous five-volume collection of his writings would be published in 1991).

Initially, Archimandrite Vitaly’s charge was to care for the needs of the vast numbers of Displaced Persons arriving into various camps in England after the war — a role to which he was well suited. But his remit soon expanded to include administration of the whole of the Deanery, effectively serving as its practical head. He would continue in this role until 29th June / 12th July 1951, when he was consecrated in St Phillip’s Church, London, as Bishop of Montevideo, to become Vicar Bishop under Archbishop Theodosy of Sao Paolo and Brazil. Given that Church life in the UK Deanery had come to flourish under Archimandrite Vitaly, his appointment to South America came as a surprise to many of the faithful; and, it would seem, to Fr Vitaly himself, who was initially opposed to the idea of his consecration and sought to remain in England. But in due course he was convinced, assented, and departed for his new obedience, having first expressed his deep affection for the Orthodox peoples of the British Isles.

Bishop Vitaly would go on to become fourth First Hierarch of the ROCOR, being elected to that office on 9th / 22nd January 1986 and serving in it until his repose in 2001. He would return to visit the London parish in June of 1986, only five months after becoming Primate, and would always be remembered and beloved by the faithful of the British Isles as one who had guided them piously in a particularly challenging period of their postwar history.

Bishop John’s ascetical feats were already well known to the whole Church, as was his unique gift of uniting divided communities. Europe was now in the tumultuous period of restructuring and recovery after WWII, finding itself once against in postwar disarray, and this brought new challenges and divisions to the Orthodox Diaspora which had already suffered much from such things in the first half of the century. A unifying figure such as St John was required, and he would bear the archpastoral yoke in Europe for the next twelve years, taking over from Bishop Nathaniel who would himself become head of a newly-independent Diocese in the British Isles.

This cannot be the place to enter into a full recounting of the life of St John, who has grown to become one of the most-beloved saints of the modern history of Orthodoxy as a whole, and who stands as one of the greatest luminary-Archpastors of the Church Abroad. Volumes have been written on his life, teachings and miracles[11]; and the Church has composed multiple Divine Services in his honour — to all of which the reader is encouraged to turn for fuller details on the saint’s life. Yet even the briefest overview of the episcopal history of the European Diocese must include the basic information on the life of the man of God who would become its most notable Ruling Hierarch.

The future St John was born Michael Maximovich into an aristocratic family of Serbian origin in Adamovka, in the Kharkov region. He attended cadet school in Poltava from 1907-1914, then studied law at Kharkov University, graduating in 1918. The legal and administrative acuity gained during these years of study would remain with him throughout his life. And so also, for many years, would the relationship that Michael forged there with Archbishop Anthony (Khrapovitsky), who had been assigned to the cathedra of Kharkov on the same day that Michael completed his cadet school studies. Archbishop Anthony — the future First Hierarch of the Church Abroad — became the young Michael’s spiritual father, and their close bond remained strong until Anthony’s repose.

Following the Russian revolution and Civil War, Michael’s family followed the same path as so many before them, and many still to come: they were evacuated to Yugoslavia, to make their temporary home amongst the expanding Russian refugee colony there. He took up further studies at the University of St Sava in Belgrade, graduating in 1925. This was in precisely the period that the Supreme Ecclesiastical Administration, which three years earlier had been renamed as the Synod of Bishops Abroad, was centred in the region; and in 1926 his spiritual father, now in the rank of Metropolitan and serving as the first First Hierarch, tonsured Michael as a monk, giving him the name ‘John’ in honour of his ancestor, Saint John (Maximovich) the Metropolitan of Tobolsk. Monk John was thereafter ordained to the Holy Priesthood on the Feast of the Entry of the Theotokos into the Temple, and taught at various schools and, from 1929, at the Seminary of St John the Theologian in Bitol.

He was consecrated to the Holy Episcopacy on 15th / 28th May 1934, Metropolitan Anthony himself leading the consecration services (Archbishop John would be the final Hierarch consecrated by the Primate before his repose in 1936), and given the title Bishop of Shanghai, Vicar Bishop of the Chinese Diocese. The new Bishop arrived in China on the Feast of the Entry of the Theotokos in 1935, and swiftly welcomed the place and its peoples into his heart. Apart from a diligent, detailed, and exacting administration of Church affairs (for which there was much need, the Orthodox community being in financial and juridicial turmoil over conflicts arising from the laboured process of building a cathedral in Shanghai), Bishop John was dedicated to works of charity and care for those in need — of which there were countless numbers in Shanghai, one of the principal regions of refuge for White Russians fleeing the Communist advance. St John assisted in completing the Cathedral in Shanghai, and himself established an orphanage in its environs, dedicated to St Tikhon of Zadonsk, which cared for hundreds of children — both those who had no parents or homes, and those whose families were unable to provide for them due to the hardships of postwar life. St John’s care for ‘his children’ became a signpost of his love and work in the Diaspora, with children who had grown up in his care still alive today to recount the life of love and compassion embodied in their Archpastor and spiritual father. And it was already in this same period, in the young years of his episcopacy, that Bishop John first became known as a worker of miracles: countless acts of divine healing and other miraculous acts were attributed to his life and prayer — the attribute that would gain him the title ‘Wonderworker’ when he was canonised by the Church nearly three decades after his repose, in 1994. Truly, he proved himself worthy of the words of his spiritual father, who now-famously wrote of his disciple: ‘This man, who appears weak is, in fact, a miracle of ascetic steadfastness and determination in our time of universal spiritual weakening.’

Bishop John was elevated to the rank of Archbishop in 1946, and from the same year succeeded Archbishop Victor (Svyatin) as Ruling Bishop of the Chinese Diocese. His stand against encroaching Communist influence was unyielding, and indeed he stood out as the sole Russian Orthodox Hierarch in China who openly refused to submit to the Soviet-dominated authorities who sought more and more control over the life of the Church. He was routinely threatened for this refusal to submit to such authority, but always replied simply: ‘I am subject to the Synod Abroad and I shall walk on the path that it directs for me.’ Yet in 1949, Shanghai was overtaken by revolutionary factions and Archbishop John had no choice but to leave. He did so with some 5,000 refugees — including ‘his children’ and staff of the orphanage — just days before the city was fully occupied. The group arrived first at a refugee camp on the Philippine island of Tubabao, and thence travelled to outposts of the Diaspora in the United States, Australia, Argentina and other parts of the world. Archbishop John himself travelled to Washington, D.C. to ensure that his people would be allowed to enter the USA. While there, he founded a parish in the city, which continues to this day.

It was thus that, having secured the safety and long-term provision for his exiled flock from Shanghai, and being unable to return to his diocese due to the changed political landscape in China, the Holy Synod of Bishops in December 1950 appointed St John to head the Diocese of Western Europe. He was given the title of Brussels, just as Nathaniel before him, though the records of the Synod make it clear that St John was sent to Paris ‘to his new post’. The Belgian title in place since 1946 remained most appropriate to the ecclesiastical landscape, but in Brussels the longstanding Resurrection Parish was nevertheless a ‘house church’, and the Memorial Church, only just completed and consecrated in 1950, was a memorial temple and not at that time considered a parish church (much less a cathedral), and was under the direct care of the Holy Synod.[12] Thus it was that Vladyka John arrived in Paris on 8th / 21st July 1951, being initially welcomed at the Resurrection Parish in Meudon and the same evening going to serve Vigil in a nearby Reformed Church (on Rue Erlanger), where he was welcomed into the Diocese by Bishop Leonty, the Vicar Bishop of Geneva, who had come to Paris for the occasion. Speaking with the warmth for which he was known, Vladyka Leonty said to Archbishop John: ‘We know with what love and respect you accompanied your flock from Shanghai. It is with the same sentiments that here, your new spiritual children come to greet you.’

For the first months of his time in Europe, St John lived and celebrated in Meudon, with the parish there being his effective cathedra, even though he bore the title of Brussels and Western Europe. As we mentioned in our preceding section on Bishop Nathaniel, the older temples and places of worship in Paris had fallen under the Evlogian schism in earlier years, and by the time of St John’s arrival they were for the most part under Constantinople. St John strove to make peace amongst the divided community, and had many successes in these pious endeavours, but the divisions were long to remain. Thus it was that, a short time later, a small chapel under the authority of the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris was made available to St John, on the Rue de Saxe, by which the presence from Meudon could be expanded once the Reformed Church on Rue Erlanger was no longer available to rent. This arrangement, however, was to be short-lived; swiftly thereafter, two adjacent garages were found on Rue de Ribera, in Paris’s Sixth Arrondissement, and Archbishop John for a time made of these his office as well as his church, dedicating the latter to All Saints of Russia. In May of the following year, 1952, Archbishop John departed Meudon for Versailles. It was there that he determined to establish the abiding administration of the Diocese, finding the Russian Cadet School (dedicated to Emperor Nicholas II) a more suitable location than any of the possibilities in Paris. The school, on Avenue Douglas Haig, was comprised of two buildings, one of which housed a small church dedicated to St Nicholas the Wonderworker, and it would be from here that St John would head the Diocese.

Vladyka John remained responsible —and deeply felt responsible — for refugees from China (and there exist letters seen by the present author in which St John signed his correspondence as ‘Archbishop of Brussels, Western Europe, and East Asia’, even years later), but as as the political fall of Shanghai was solidified his attention became wholly focussed upon his new European territory. Here he continued in the spirit of pastoral and charitable action by which his time in China had been characterised. Despite the Diocese of Western Europe being geographically expansive, with the communities greatly spread out across the territory, St John regularly visited his parishes, from the great to the small, taking concern for the welfare of every clergyman and the faithful in his charge. He was deeply devoted to mission, founding new communities and building up those that already existed; in his reign, the diocesan presence in Dutch- and French-speaking regions was greatly enhanced. In England, which became a separate Diocese in the first year of St John’s appointment, but returned to his direct oversight two years later (see below), he consecrated the Cathedral of the Dormition of the Mother of God at Emperor’s Gate in London in 1959, and also visited parishes in Bradford and Manchester, and strongly encouraged the restoration of full veneration of the local saints of the British Isles amongst the flock. In Europe he kept a rigorous schedule, serving every day, meeting with all who came to see him, and dedicating several hours each evening to responding to the vast amount of correspondence he received from faithful and enquirers from all over the world. In 1952 he submitted to the Synod a lengthy document insisting upon the increased veneration of the local Orthodox saints of western history — those of France, Switzerland, the British Isles and elsewhere. From 1956 he was a Regular Member of the Holy Synod of Bishops. And of course, in all these days and years, miracles flowed from St John at almost every turn. His gifts of clairvoyance and healing were known across Europe, and there remain many alive yet today who offer personal, first-hand testimony to the miracles the Wonderworker effected in these lands. While it may not have been possible, at that time, to heal the central schism amongst the Russian Orthodox Diaspora in France, St John was nevertheless profoundly successful in healing internal divisions amongst the communities of the Church Abroad, many of which had been deeply scarred by earlier events; and always maintained a stance of striving to seek reunion with divided factions.

St John began to spend more and more time in Brussels, often travelling there during the vacation periods of the Cadet School in Versailles, as well as for Pascha and the Feast of St Job, to whom the Memorial Church in Brussels is dedicated. Gradually it became more effectively the centre of his administration. The Cadet School was diminishing (it would close in 1964), and the practical facilities in Paris remained limited: it would be only in 1961 that a suitable church would be found on Rue Claude Lorrain, again in the Sixth Arrondissement (where St John’s ‘garage church’ had been), which was consecrated to All Saints of Russia by Archbishop John, together with Archbishop Anthony (then his Vicar in Geneva) on 12th / 25th December 1961. So it was that St John, having been living in Meudon and working from Versailles, came at length to be more closely associated with the city of his title, Archbishop of Brussels and Western Europe — by which he continues lovingly to be remembered by the faithful of the Diocese.

After the retirement in California in 1962 of Archbishop Tikhon (Troitsky), St John’s longtime friend who had been the Ruling Bishop of the Western American Diocese since 1933, Archbishop John was called by the Holy Synod to take up that diocese, which was suffering from deep internal conflicts and needed the kind of unifying, spiritual administration that St John had demonstrated both in Shanghai and in Europe. Thus he was sent to the USA in 1963 and became Archbishop of San Francisco and Western America, in which role he would serve until his repose, three years later, on 20th June / 2nd July 1966, in Seattle. His death had been foretold by St John himself, taking place on the day of the commemoration of St Jude, the brother of the Lord, while bringing the wonderworking Kursk-root Icon of the Theotokos to the northern parts of his diocese.

For the next several decades the resting place of Archbishop John was in the crypt beneath the new Cathedral of the Holy Virgin in San Francisco: the largest cathedral in the Church Abroad, the construction of which he had himself been instrumental in bringing to a successful conclusion. The great veneration in which he was already held in his lifetime continued after his repose, indeed growing as the wonderworking power of his prayer continued to manifest itself long after his death. So it was the he was glorified as a saint in 1994. The celebration of his glorification was one of the most joyful occasions of the Orthodox Diaspora in the twentieth century, during which his precious relics — which in 1993 had been found to be wholly incorrupt — were transferred into a shrine in the main Cathedral; and the glorious memory of the saint officially canonised as ‘St John the Wonderworker of Shanghai and San Francisco’ is revered today throughout the whole Orthodox world, though he is perhaps more personally known in these territories as St John of Shanghai, Wonderworker of Western Europe. Indeed, there remains a special veneration for him in the Diocese of Great Britain and Western Europe, where for nearly twelve years the great saint of God served as our Ruling Bishop, and where the imprint of his archpastoral love remains everywhere enshrined in Diocesan and parochial life.

The decision of the Holy Synod of 2nd / 15th December 1950, which appointed Archbishop John to Europe, simultaneously initiated the first period of distinct rule for the British Isles, which, though short lived, would be an important phase in its life. The Diocese of Western Europe was divided into two dioceses, the larger territory (for the first time referred to as the ‘Continental region’ of Europe) under the rule of Archbishop John with his title of Archbishop of Brussels and Western Europe; while the parishes in England and the Netherlands were to form a distinct Diocese entrusted to Bishop Nathaniel, who would assume the title Bishop of Preston and the Hague. The city of Preston, in the north of England, never in fact had a permanent parish — though it was home to many Russian immigrants — and Divine Services were conducted there only in rented accommodation. Its selection as the titular cathedra for the See, as opposed to London (which had been the title of Bishop Nicholas), was based at least in part on the remnant hope that the Anglican Church might be united to Holy Orthodoxy: a project that had been much longed for by the late First Hierarch, Metropolitan Anthony, and about which he had more than once spoken during his visits to the United Kingdom, seeing it as a kind of parallel to the return of the Catholic Uniates to Orthodoxy. This hope was maintained also by Metropolitan Anthony’s spiritual son, Archbishop John, whose entire episcopacy was marked out by the desire for the restoration of fragmented Christianity in all places into Holy Orthodoxy. The decision not to name Orthodox Bishops after cities in which Anglican bishops held a title — which of course included London — was followed, in part at the urging of St John, in order not to create stumbling blocks or perceived slights where there might be the possibility for such a hoped-for unity in future.[13] Though this desire would ultimately prove unfruitful and any hope of a large-scale turning of Anglican Church structures to Holy Orthodoxy would swiftly fade, this practice of naming the Church’s hierarchs in the UK would continue for another 68 years.

It was during this same period that the ancient Cathedral of the Exaltation of the Cross in Geneva, and indeed Switzerland more broadly, began to take on a more prominent position in the European Diocese. Since 1943, Fr Leonty (Bartoshevich) had been serving as Administrator of the Russian Parishes in Switzerland from the environs of Geneva, having been raised to the rank of Archimandrite in 1946. He thus served under Metropolitan Seraphim and Bishop Nathaniel, and when St John was appointed as Ruling Archbishop, those parishes would be united into a ‘Swiss Vicariate’ with Fr Leonty at its head.

Archimandrite Leonty’s life (which we have outlined in a preceding section) and prayerful demeanour, together with evident talents in administration that had become known during his seven years administrating the Swiss parishes, had spiritually prepared him well to take on higher office. In 1950, the year of St John’s appointment to Europe, he was consecrated to the Episcopacy and given the title Bishop of Geneva, Vicar Bishop of the Western European Diocese. The first to bear this title, he was likewise the first to head a Swiss Vicariate within the Diocese. It was an important step in the life of the region.

Unfortunately, Bishop Leonty was to serve as Bishop of Geneva for only six years, dying unexpectedly in 1956, only two years after he had participated in the episcopal consecration of Bishop Nikodem (see below). He is interred in the south-western corner of the Geneva Cathedral. His loss was profoundly felt by the faithful of the region, as he had earned their deep love and respect over the years of his service, and had become known in much wider circles as a genuinely holy man of prayer. But he was not to be the last Bartoshevich to sit upon the episcopal throne of Geneva. Upon Bishop Leonty’s repose, he was to be succeeded by another of the great figures in the episcopal history of the Diocese: his own brother, who in due course would become known as Archbishop Anthony of Geneva and Western Europe.

The future Bishop (and later Archbishop) Nikodem was born Nikolai Vasilievich Nagaieff in 1883 in Abo (now Turku in Finland, then within the Russian Empire), where he attended the First Cadet Corps School in St Petersburg and then St Paul’s Military Academy. His military career was of note: Nikolai was promoted to the Second Battalion of the Infantry Guards, famous as the unit stationed at Tsarskoe Selo with the sacred charge of guarding the residence of the Tsar — the future Royal Martyr, St Nicholas II. Nikolai fought in the First World War, was wounded in battle, and recovered at a field hospital organised by the Tsarina, the future Royal Martyr Alexandra, who herself tended his wounds. He became a General in the Russian Imperial Army, and for his bravery was awarded the highest military distinction in Imperial Russia: the Order of St George. During the Civil War, he was an officer on the staff of General Wrangel in the south of Russia. Afterwards, he was evacuated along the route via Constantinople to Belgrade. Thus arriving into the exile community in Yugoslavia as one of its most militarily distinguished members, Nikolai was always humble and self-effacing about his distinctions — a characteristic that would mark out the whole of his life.

Though he had been a married man, Nikolai’s wife reposed in the Lord shortly after her arrival in Belgrade. Thus it was that, in the early 1940s, Nikolai came to join the Milkovo Monastery (a sacred place connected, as we have already seen, to so many of the early Hierarchs of our Diocese) and was tonsured as a monk in 1943, receiving the name Nikodem in honour of the Venerable Nikodem the Prosphora-Baker of the Kiev Caves. This would be taken by some, years later, as having been a prophetic sign: St Nikodem of Kiev is commemorated on 31st October / 13th November, the same day as St Aristobulus of the Seventy, the first Bishop of Britain, where Fr Nikodem would ultimately fulfil his archpastoral service.

Monk Nikodem was ordained Hierodeacon and then Hieromonk in 1943 by Metropolitan Anastassy and served as a military chaplain during WWII. At the war’s conclusion he relocated to Germany, where he joined the Brotherhood of Saint Job (to whom he had the deepest personal devotion) and became co-founder of its Munich Monastery, in which he resided from 1944-1948. In 1946 he was raised to the rank of Abbot. His service then took him to a parish in Osier-la-Ferriere, near Paris, in 1948, and finally to Geneva, where he served together with Bishop Leonty. It was there, in 1951, that he was elevated to the dignity of Archimandrite and, at the age of 68, appointed to London. He arrived in England in 1952.

Following his nomination by the Holy Synod in 1953, Archimandrite Nikodem’s consecration to the Holy Episcopacy took place in Brussels on 5th / 18th July 1954, when all the Hierarchs of the Church Abroad in Western Europe were gathered for their annual conference (a tradition that held at the time, and which was reintroduced in 2022). Archbishop St John was the chief consecrator, together with Bishop Alexander (Lovchy, the future Archbishop of Berlin and Germany) and Bishop Leonty of Geneva. Bishop Nikodem was given the title Bishop of Preston, Vicar Bishop of the Western European Diocese; in October 1957 this was altered, at St John’s request, to Bishop of Richmond, since by this time the demographics of the Russian Orthodox community in England had changed and Preston had few faithful in its environs, whereas Richmond was the closest city to the Bishop’s residence in Greater London.[14]

During his time as Vicar Bishop under St John, Bishop Nikodem worked tirelessly to establish new parishes and, from 1956-1959, oversaw the transition of the London parish from the closure of St Philip’s Church in Buckingham Palace Road (which was demolished in order to make room for the City’s expansion of Victoria Station) to the opening of the new Cathedral at Emperor’s Gate, which was consecrated by Archbishop John in 1959.

Thus it was that for nearly a decade, Bishop Nikodem served faithfully under his Ruling Bishop, St John, bringing stability, new life and spiritual fortitude to the flock in the British Isles. They celebrated together in London for the final time on the Feast of the Dormition in 1962, the year before St John was sent to the United States.

Meanwhile, a new Vicar would be appointed in Europe. The brother of Bishop Leonty, who would become the second Bishop of Geneva and would go on to become the longest-serving Ruling Hierarch of the Western European Diocese, was born Andrei Georgievich Bartoshevich in 1911, in St Petersburg. The early life of the brothers Bartoshevich has already been described in the above; like his brother, Andrei completed his theological studies at the Belgrade Theological Faculty (1934-1939), was tonsured a monk (receiving the name Anthony), and was ordained to the Holy Priesthood in 1941.

Fr Anthony first served as a Priest in Yugoslavia, where he remained until 1949. From 1946, the then-Archimandrite lived in Belgrade and served at the Holy Trinity Cathedral. In 1949, he went first to Switzerland, where his brother already lived, and for a few years served in various parishes of the Diocese, including in Lyon. He was assigned to the Holy Resurrection Church in Brussels from 1952, and served as the Rector from 1953-1957. It was in the final year of his rectorship there that Archimandrite Anthony was consecrated to the Holy Episcopacy, on 8th / 21st April 1957 (having been nominated the year before upon his brother’s death), and was named Bishop of Geneva, Vicar under Archbishop John. Thus succeeding his own brother, the second Bishop of Geneva arrived at the cathedra on which he would sit for the remainder of his earthly life — for the first six years as head of the Swiss Vicariate and Vicar to St John, and then, after St John’s departure to America, as Ruling Bishop of the Diocese of Western Europe. Of him we shall have considerably more to say in what follows.

The period of Archbishop St John’s reign as Ruling Bishop of Western Europe, from 1950-1963, was thus one of the most fruitful and pivotal in the history of the Diocese. Not only was its spiritual and pastoral life dramatically strengthened by the headship of the great ascetic and man of prayer himself, but he, with the Holy Synod, took important steps in the structural administration of the Diocese and its vicarial regions. Clear lines of organisation were developed for the Church’s communities in England and Switzerland, together with the advancement of her activities in France, the Netherlands, Belgium and elsewhere across the continent; and more than this, Godly and deeply pious Archpastors were appointed to guide them in the right Faith and Orthodox practice. Bishops Leonty and Anthony in Geneva, and Bishop Nikodem in London, were candles kindled by the fire of St John’s prayer; and the light that the latter two shone in their territories would continue beyond the years of St John’s appointment in Europe. In the period that followed his departure to the United States, they would be the figures to guide the faithful of Great Britain and Europe into the future.

Archbishop Anthony headed the Diocese with great piety and diligence, becoming a true shepherd to his flock. He was characterised by his combination of personal care and strict zeal, as well as his desire to extend the spiritual mission of the Diocese to those beyond its borders, sponsoring missionary work amongst the long-suffering and persecuted faithful in the Soviet Union by publishing and broadcasting, largely in cooperation with ‘Orthodox Action’. He was also a distinguished iconographer, having studied under the renowned Pimen Sofronov. He painted several icons, including those for the iconostasis of the parish in Lyon, France, and an icon of St Irenei of Lyon for the same church; an icon of All Saints of Russia for Holy Trinity Church in Belgrade; and an icon of the Descent into Hades for the Iveron Chapel crypt in Belgrade, where Metropolitan Anthony is buried.

The destabilising periods in the immediate aftermath of both the Russian Civil War and World War II, with their frenetic tendencies for jurisdictional changes and the multiplication of schisms throughout Europe and elsewhere, had to a degree calmed by the time Archbishop Anthony came to the diocesan throne, and the unifying influence of St John had healed many old wounds. The thirty-year period of Vladyka Anthony’s headship of the Diocese is remembered as a largely peaceful one, though the proclivities of sinful man occasionally raised up local dissensions and issues, to each of which the Archpastor addressed himself with patience and piety, steadfast in the preservation of the canonical life of the Church and pastorally sensitive to the needs of the flock.

Archbishop Anthony was a regular member of the Holy Synod of Bishops, and from 1987 served as First Deputy to its President (thus the second highest-ranking Hierarch in the Church Abroad, after the Primate). Yet for all his high office, he remained an intensely pastoral figure. He was known for his love for children and youth, setting up the first Orthodox School in Brussels and establishing youth camps in the Diocese. He was a prayerful liturgist, deeply cognisant of the spiritual beauty of every aspect of the Divine Services. He maintained the custom of himself reading the Six Psalms at Matins when he would visit parishes, and would always stay long after the Divine Services in order to converse with the faithful. In terms of liturgics, he retained throughout his life his monastic bearing and constantly worked — especially in Geneva — to return the order of services, whenever he saw them as lax, to a proper reflection of the practices in the Ustav. When no Divine Services were scheduled in the church where he happened to be, he kept the full cycle of services in his home. His adherence to the rules of fasting was likewise diligent: behind the warm smile and kindness of the Archpastor was a deep internal discipline. He is well known for refusing to bend the fasting rules on account of his travels, insisting that he maintain strict fasting even when being taken to restaurants on fasting days, famously saying, ‘The Ustav simply does not make dispensations for travellers’.

During his Archpastoral reign, the organisation of pilgrimages became a feature of Diocesan life. He himself would regularly lead pilgrimages to the Holy Land, speaking with the faithful and guiding them to a deeper veneration of the holy sites. But he also paid diligent attention to the local inheritance of Orthodox Europe: Archbishop Anthony led pilgrimages, for example, to the ancient sites of Christian martyrdom in Lyon; to the sites of saints that had shone forth in the Helvetic (Swiss) lands — and it was at Archbishop Anthony’s instruction that Fr Pierre Cantacuzène (who would become Bishop Ambrose and eventual successor to Vladyka Anthony) composed the service to All Saints of the Helvetic Lands, which remains in use in the Diocese to this day.

In 1993, the thirtieth year of his reign as Ruling Bishop, Archbishop Anthony became gravely ill, and sensed that his earthly end was near. Amongst his final acts as Diocesan Bishop were to take part in the consecration of Bishop Seraphim, who would be his immediate successor, and Bishop Ambrose, who would be elevated to the role of Diocesan Bishop sometime later. Thus having fulfilled his earthly charge and, under the guidance of the Holy Synod, ensured the succession of the Diocese, Archbishop Anthony succumbed to his illness and reposed in Geneva on 19th September / 2nd October 1993. He is interred within the Geneva Cathedral, next to his brother, Bishop Leonty.

It was in this context that he met St John during the latter’s visit in 1952 to the parish in The Hague, dedicated to St John the Forerunner. When the parish formally joined the Western European Diocese in 1954, Archbishop John ordained Jakob a Hieromonk and appointed him Rector of the parish; in 1958 he was elevated to Abbot.

Thus it was that in 1963, upon St John’s reassignment to the USA and proposal of Abbot Jakob’s name to the Holy Synod, the latter was elected to become a Vicar Bishop of the Diocese of Western Europe, with the title ‘of the Hague’. He was elevated to Archimandrite on 21st February 1965, and his episcopal consecration took place on 19th September of the same year in the Memorial Church in Brussels. The consecrating Hierarchs were the saintly Metropolitan Philaret, First Hierarch of the ROCOR, Archbishop Anthony of Geneva and Western Europe (under whom Vladyka Jakob was to serve as Vicar), and Bishop Nathaniel — who, after his time in the UK, described above, had gone to Africa and thence to Germany, where he was at the time of Bishop Jakob’s consecration living in the Monastery of St Job in Munich.

Thus, the small Dutch mission was elevated to the status of a Vicariate of the Western European Diocese, though in the end this was to be short lived. St John’s repose in 1966 left Bishop Jakob without the close personal connection he had felt for over a decade, and from that point his relations with the Holy Synod began to deteriorate. In 1971 he left the Church Abroad, and in August 1972 was received into the Moscow Patriarchate (which at that time was not in sacramental communion with the ROCOR). This separation involved his parish in The Hague as well as two small monastic communities, which were simultaneously received by the MP, and became the foundation of a newly-formed Diocese of the Hague and the Netherlands which the Patriarchate established with the occasion of Bishop Jakob’s reception. He there remained until his retirement in 1988 and death in 1991, never being reconciled to the Church of his ordination and consecration.

The remaining Dutch communities — chiefly those in Amsterdam and Arnhem — refused to follow Bishop Jakob in his departure from the ROCOR, and returned to the status of parishes of the Western European Diocese under Vladyka Anthony from 1971.

During all but the initial months of the first twelve years of Archbishop Anthony’s reign in Geneva, the parishes in the United Kingdom did not fall under his omofor. Since July 1954, Bishop Nikodem of Richmond had been heading the English Vicariate under St John, and upon the latter’s departure to the USA in 1963 he remained as Vicar Bishop, now under Vladyka Anthony. However, the following year the Council of Bishops determined to make the the communities under Bishop Nikodem into an independent Diocese of Richmond and Great Britain — the second time that the communities of the British Isles were to constitute a distinct Diocese, and this time for a considerably longer period. Thus from 1964, Bishop Nikodem headed the Diocese, which no longer had administrative connection to continental Western Europe. In 1968, on the Feast of Pokrov, the Holy Synod elevated him to the dignity of Archbishop.

Archbishop Nikodem’s early life and formation have already been described in a preceding section. As Ruling Bishop, the example of piety, zeal and active pastoral care he had demonstrated during his time as Vicar continued. He is remembered as a venerable Archpastor of the Church, whose people respected his authority and gentleness. Like so many other Hierarchs of the Church Abroad, Vladyka Nikodem was deeply committed to missionary work and the expansion of the reach of the Church into all its local environs. He ordained English and other converts to the Holy Priesthood, appointed clergy specifically to roles of missionary labour amongst the English populous, introduced English-language singing at Divine Services at the Cathedral in Emperor’s Gate (including appointing a musical group of English students, the Wooldridge Singers, to sing them, with the avowed hope that this exposure to the Church would lead them to convert to Orthodoxy), established a missionary Brotherhood of St Seraphim in Little Walsingham and ordained an English convert to head it, and expanded the veneration of local saints. Though his own English was limited, he nevertheless was deeply beloved by the English faithful. And in the midst of his active pastoral and administrative labours, Archbishop Nikodem maintained a personal life of constant ascesis, prayer and interior quietude, deeply committed to his monastic vocation. This in itself inspired many non-Russians, unfamiliar with Orthodoxy, who encountered the Ruling Bishop of the Diocese of Richmond and Great Britain and saw in him a living example of piety and a witness of sanctity.

Under Archbishop Nikodem, a close relationship with the First Hierarch, Metropolitan Philaret (who had come to the Primatial Throne in 1964, succeeding Metropolitan Anastassy), permitted an increasingly strong relationship between the First Hierarch and the Dioceses in Great Britain and Europe. From about 1972 onwards, Metropolitan Philaret began to visit London annually, as he also did France. In this the unity of the Church Abroad throughout the world was fostered in both regions, the First Hierarch and local Hierarchs serving and teaching together.

Early in the morning of 17th / 30th October 1976, at the venerable age of 93, Archbishop Nikodem peacefully reposed in the Lord, having served the faithful of the British Isles for more than twenty years (ten as Bishop of the English Vicariate, and twelve as Ruling Bishop of the independent Diocese of Richmond and Great Britain) and having become the eldest Hierarch of the Church Abroad. Archbishop Anthony of Geneva and Western Europe came to London to conduct the funeral service four days later, and the mortal remains of the pious Archpastor were interred in Brompton Cemetery. It remains to this day the tradition of the London Cathedral parishioners to visit his grave in Bright Week, singing anew the hymns of Paschal joy to their long-serving Archpastor.

Following Archbishop Nikodem’s death, the Diocese of Richmond and Great Britain, now without a Ruling Bishop, was entrusted to the care of Archbishop Anthony. However, rather than return it to the status of a Vicariate within the Western European Diocese, Archbishop Anthony headed it as a Diocese continuing in its independent administrative status — effectively making him the canonical head of two dioceses, though the longstanding connection of the two territories made this arrangement rather organic. Nevertheless, he reported to the Holy Synod that, because the European Diocese was so large and its communities so dispersed, he felt he could not adequately care also for the British Isles, which had grown to flourish under Archbishop Nikodem. An Archimandrite, who had himself been formed in the St Seraphim Brotherhood that Vladyka Nikodem had founded and afterwards been educated, entered monasticism and and ordained in the USA,[15] was in 1977 appointed to the task of the practical administration of the Diocese under the guidance of the First Hierarch, and this arrangement abided for the next four years, until, in 1981, a new Bishop would be appointed to the British Isles.

Upon his graduation in 1930 went to Paris to continue his studies at the Institut Saint-Serge. There he obtained his doctorate, but also came under the divisive influence of Metropolitan Evlogy, who, following his departure from the Church Abroad in 1926 had altered jurisdictions twice, and was at that time in Paris under Constantinople. Emmanuel was ordained to the Holy Priesthood by his hands in 1932, and assigned to serve in Berlin, and then Leipzig. By God’s mercy, in 1938 Fr Emmanuel and his flock departed from the schism and were received into the Church Abroad. It was in this capacity that he would serve as a delegate the Second All-Diaspora Council in Belgrade later that year.

During WWII Fr Emmanuel studied medicine at Berlin University, and in the years that followed the war served in various Displaced Persons camps in West Germany. He eventually emigrated to the United States in 1949. There he was attached to several parishes for the next 18 years, during which his spiritual gifts and discipline became known to the Church Hierarchy. In 1967, the See of Brisbane (a Vicariate of the Diocese of Australia and New Zealand) having become vacant, Fr Emmanuel was tonsured as a monk at Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville by Archbishop Averky (Taushev), receiving the name Constantine, and appointed to that office. Bishop Constantine of Brisbane served in Australia for eleven years before returning to the United States in 1978, at the age of 71, to retire. It would be from here, however, that he would be called to England: in 1981, following a visit to London in the summer that resulted in the local community petitioning the Holy Synod to have him sent to England, he was appointed Bishop of Richmond and Great Britain and moved to London in December of that year.

Unfortunately, age and poor health would make it impossible for Bishop Constantine to remain long in the British Isles, and he retired once again — this time, definitively — only four years later in January of 1986. Yet even in his short time as head of the Richmond Diocese, he made his mark. From the outset, he made it known that he wished to minister to the English as much as to the Russians in his care, echoing the missionary zeal of his predecessor. Though Bishop Constantine’s English, like Archbishop Nikodem’s, was limited, he insisted on serving monthly in English, which required the English texts to be transcribed for him into Cyrillic lettering so that he could pronounce them correctly. He founded a monastery in southern England, and organised the first Diocesan Pilgrimage to the shrine of St Alban, Protomartyr of Britain, in 1982 — a tradition that is maintained annually to this day.

Bishop Constantine presented his request for retirement at the Council of Bishops in January 1986 in New York, his health seriously deteriorated through conditions aggravated by the English climate. His request was granted and Bishop Constantine remained in England, now as a retired Bishop, for one final year as he prepared his return to settle in the USA. He reposed peacefully on 18th / 31st May 1996. In 2014, his remains were found to be incorrupt, and were re-interred at Holy Trinity Monastery, Jordanville, New York, where he had been tonsured to the monastic life.

By this decision, which though ‘temporary’ in intention would in fact endure for three decades, a renewed closeness and interaction between two of the territorial regions in broader Europe was fostered (from 1919-1926 Germany had been part of the Western European Diocese, together with England; from 1924 as vicariates under a single Ruling Hierarch in Paris). As a sign of the unity between the Church Abroad’s communities in Europe as a whole, Archbishop Anthony came to England for Bishop Mark’s first visit in his new role, the two concelebrating together in London in the presence of the retired Bishop Constantine (whose health did not permit him to concelebrate), and Archbishop Anthony warmly commended the faithful of the British Isles to their new ruling Archpastor.

[We must note that, beginning with this section, we enter into the description of Hierarchs who are still living and serving the Church, which include also the present author. Following the ancient axiom that we do not assess a life until its earthly term is over, in this and subsequent sections dealing with living persons I will keep the biographical information to essentials offered without interpretation, focussing chiefly on the ecclesiastical appointments which are of chief interest to this study.]

The future Metropolitan Mark was born Michael Arndt in Eastern Germany in 1941, his family moving to the West in 1954 and settling in Frankfurt am Main. He was called to military service several times after his graduation from school, attaining the rank of First Lieutenant; then, in 1962 he began university studies in Slavic Languages and completed his doctorate in Ancient Russian Literature, and was received into the Holy Orthodox Church in 1964. He went on to study at the Theological Faculty of the University of Belgrade, where he came under the influence of the renowned Serbian Orthodox Theologian, Father Justin Popovic (canonised in 2010 as St Justin of Chelije), and would go on to complete his doctoral work in 1969. During this period he decided to enter the monastic life: he was ordained Deacon in the spring of 1975, and in August of the same year tonsured with the name Mark by Bishop Pavel (Pavlov) of Stuttgart, and ordained Hieromonk. The next year, in 1976, he was elevated to the rank of Archimandrite. On 17th / 30th November 1980 he was consecrated to the Holy Episcopacy, being appointed Bishop of Munich and Southern Germany, succeeding Bishop Pavel who had been sent to Australia. In 1982 he was appointed Ruling Bishop of Berlin and Germany.

It was thus only six years into his episcopal life, in April 1986, that he was appointed also as Ruling Bishop of the Diocese of Great Britain and Ireland, as well as being made Rector of the parish in Copenhagen. Bishop Mark was therefore effectively Ruling Bishop of two dioceses and administrator of a parish in yet a third territory (which would come to fall under the auspices of his German Diocese). He was elevated to the rank of Archbishop four years later, in 1990, and from 1997 appointed to oversee also the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem.

This is not the place to address his activities in Germany and elsewhere during what is at present more than fort-five years in the episcopacy — perhaps amongst the most notable being his revitalisation of the Monastery of St Job in Munich along Athonite lines, and his extensive missionary zeal that has more than doubled the number of parishes in his territory — but during the period of his headship of the Diocese in the British Isles (1986-2016), his initiatives included the creation of new communities in Ireland, the north of England, Wales and elsewhere[16]; organising the visit of the First Hierarch to the Diocese, and involving him in the discussions of the Cathedral’s transitional property status; shepherding the flock in the challenging period of approach to the restoration of sacramental communion between the ROCOR and the Moscow Patriarchate; and above all the building of the beautiful new Cathedral in Harvard Road, London, which is now the principal cathedra of the Diocese of Great Britain and Western Europe.

In the years that followed (1954-1961) he worked in Paris and Versailles, during St John’s time in both cities; and in 1961 he was ordained to the Holy Diaconate and Priesthood in Geneva by Bishop Anthony, at that time the Vicar Bishop for Switzerland under St John. Fr Igor was appointed to serve the Parish of the Archangel Michael in Cannes, and in 1963 was named its Rector. In 1971 he was elevated to the dignity of Archpriest and made Dean for the parishes in the south of France — during this period he is known to have trained for future service some ten Priests who would serve in the European Diocese.

After serving the Cannes Parish for two-and-a-half decades, Fr Igor was appointed Rector of the parish in Lyons in 1986. In 1993, Archbishop Anthony’s terminal illness already being known and the Ruling Hierarch having nominated Fr Igor as his successor, the Council of Bishops prayerfully agreed and Fr Igor was tonsured a monk, receiving the name Seraphim. On 6th / 19th September of the same year he was consecrated to the Holy Episcopacy and given the title Bishop of Lesna, Vicar Bishop of the Diocese of Geneva and Western Europe. The consecration took place in the Cathedral of the Elevation of the Cross in Geneva, the consecrating Hierarchs being Metropolitan Vitaly (Ustinov, former Administrator of the UK Deanery, who had succeeded Metropolitan Philaret as First Hierarch in 1986), Archbishop Anthony of Geneva and Western Europe, Archbishop Mark of Berlin, Germany and Great Britain, and the then-Bishop Barnabas (Prokofieff, who later departed from the episcopacy[17]). When Archbishop Anthony reposed in early October of that year, just two weeks after Bishop Seraphim’s consecration, the latter was formally appointed to succeed him as Ruling Bishop, with the title of Brussels and Western Europe (reverting to the title given to Archbishops Nathaniel and John, in this case out of practical considerations of the division of labours between the Hierarchs in the region[18]). His residence, however, remained in the Lesna Convent. There was thus a peaceful transition following the death of Archbishop Anthony, something not always easy to achieve after so long a reign of so influential a Hierarch. Archbishop Anthony’s own nomination of Bishop Seraphim to the Holy Synod had helped ensure this.

Bishop Seraphim was elevated to the dignity of Archbishop in 1995 — a rather unusual elevation given that he had only been consecrated a Bishop two years before: by far the fastest accession to that high rank in the history of the Diocese, and a sign of the esteem in which he was held as well as the importance of the Western European Diocese to the Church Abroad as a whole, together with the desire to underscore the distinction between the Ruling Bishop and his Vicars. His was not, however, to be a long-lived service as Ruling Bishop. On account of his own declining health, Archbishop Seraphim petitioned the Council of Bishops in October of 2000 that he be allowed to retire. His petition was granted, the Holy Council granting Archbishop Seraphim the right to reside at the Lesna Convent in his retirement, where his name would be commemorated at the Divine Services after that of the Ruling Hierarch; and he was also granted the right to continue to participate in the Council of Bishops (something that is not automatic upon an Hierarch’s retirement, but which may be granted by the Council). Living out the remainder of his life in the convent, Archbishop Seraphim reposed in the Lord on 11th / 24th November 2003.

Pierre was tonsured a Reader in 1972 at the Parish of the Great-Martyr Barbara in Vevey, and in 1974 participated in the Third All-Diaspora Council. He served as sacristan at the Cathedral of the Exaltation of the Cross in Geneva from 1975-1978, where he was taken under the wing of Archbishop Anthony, the Ruling Bishop, who became his spiritual father. It was Archbishop Anthony who ordained Pierre a Deacon in the spring of 1976, and on 13th / 26th September of the same year a Priest, both ordinations taking place in Geneva. Fr Pierre’s initial priestly service took place in the Geneva Cathedral, and in 1978 he was appointed Rector of the Vevey Parish in the town of his birth. From there he also was sent to serve in various other parishes of the Diocese, including those in Lyon, Bari, Rome, and Montpellier. For his faithful and tireless service, he was elevated to the rank of Archpriest on 4th / 17th December 1991.

His monastic life began two years later when, on 24th August / 6th September 1993, he was tonsured a monk and given the name Ambrose. This was in the final month of Archbishop Anthony’s life, as part of the arrangements blessed by the Holy Synod for the succession of the Diocese. He was consecrated to the Holy Episcopacy later that month (13th / 26th September) in Geneva, at the hands of the First Hierarch, Metropolitan Vitaly, Archbishop Anthony, Archbishop Mark, and Bishop Seraphim of Lesna, who had himself been consecrated just seven days before. It was to be the final consecration performed by Archbishop Anthony, who reposed in the Lord six days later.

Bishop Ambrose was made Bishop of Vevey, Vicar of the Western European Diocese, serving in this role under Bishop Seraphim, who had succeeded Archbishop Anthony as Ruling Bishop. In his Vicarial role he was especially responsible for the oversight of parishes in Switzerland and Italy. When then-Archbishop Seraphim retired in 2000, the Council of Bishops on 4th / 17th October of that year appointed Bishop Ambrose as Bishop of Geneva and Western Europe, Ruling Bishop of the Diocese.

During his service as Ruling Hierarch, Bishop Ambrose participated in the Committee for Dialogue with the Moscow Patriarchate. In May 2006 he was a member of the Fourth All-Diaspora Council that took place in San Francisco, California. He is remembered for his deep love for the local saints and their veneration (himself composing, as we noted above, the service of All Saints of the Swiss Lands).

In 2006, his health failing, Bishop Ambrose petitioned the Council of Bishops to be retired, and on 6th / 19th May of that year his request was granted. He retired to his hometown of Vevey, where he was granted the right to serve in the Parish of St Barbara. He continued in that role until 2009, where on 9th / 22nd July he reposed in the Lord.

Simeon was tonsured as a Reader in 1979 by Archbishop Anthony of Geneva and Western Europe, and in 1980 as Subdeacon. His ordination to the Diaconate followed swiftly in 1981, in which rank he would serve for a full decade before being ordinated to the Holy Priesthood in 1991. Fr Simeon’s work with youth continued, and he led youth camps both locally as well as, in 1994-1995, in Russia; while also benefitting from his training in the medical corps to work in hospitals and clinics in France.

He entered the monastic life in 1996, when, on Bright Friday he was tonsured a monk by Metropolitan Vitaly, the First Hierarch and former Administrator of the UK Deanery, and given the name ‘Michael’. Two days later he was elevated to the rank of Abbot. On the feast of the Holy Apostles Sts Peter and Paul of the same year he was consecrated as Bishop of Toronto, Vicar Bishop of the Canadian Diocese, in which role he would serve for six years until, in 2002, being named Bishop of Boston, Vicar Bishop of the Eastern American Diocese. It would be from that role that, four years later, he would be appointed to the See of Western Europe to replace Bishop Ambrose. He was given the title of Geneva and Western Europe, and ruled from the Cathedral of the Exaltation of the Cross in Geneva. At the winter session of the Holy Synod in 2011 he was elevated to the dignity of Archbishop.

During his headship of the Western European Diocese, Archbishop Michael continued to work with youth, particularly via the ‘Vitiaz’ youth camps in France. He also worked to prepare the flock of the Diocese for the restoration of Eucharistic communion with the Moscow Patriarchate, which was effected in May 2007 with the signing of the ‘Act of Reconciliation’ by the First Hierarch of the Church Abroad, Metropolitan Laurus, and the Patriarch of Moscow, Alexei II. Under Archbishop Michael, the faithful in Western Europe began to live out the blessings of this restored sacramental communion with the Patriarchate, which had been interrupted since the time of the Russian Revolution, maintaining the self-governing administration of the Church Abroad and its European dioceses. It was during Archbishop Michael’s tenure as Ruling Bishop that the Cathedral in Geneva celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2016.

In December 2017 Archbishop Michael, then approaching his 74th year, was freed from the responsibility of governing the Western European Diocese and granted the title of Vicar Bishop of Meudon. In 2018 he entered into retirement, with the right to continue to serve in the Meudon Parish. On Palm Sunday 2023, marking Archbishop Michael’s 80th birthday, he prayed in the Holy Altar of the Geneva Cathedral with his successor and was warmly congratulated by the clergy and faithful of the Geneva community.

Meanwhile, on 27th November / 10th December 2016, after ‘temporarily’ caring for the Diocese of Great Britain and Ireland for thirty years (thus serving it for a length of time equal to the reign of the longest-serving Archbishop of Western Europe, Archbishop Anthony), Archbishop Mark of Berlin and Germany presented his request for retirement from that role to the Holy Synod. Having at that point recently surpassed his 35th year in episcopal office, Archbishop Mark requested to focus in the years ahead upon the needs of his own German Diocese, which itself was flourishing. Expressing its profound thanks for his three decades of expanded service in the British Isles, the Synod accepted his request and relieved Archbishop Mark of his responsibility for the territories of the British Isles. He remains the Ruling Bishop in Germany and associated territories, as well continuing to serve as the Vice-President of the Synod of Bishops. In 2019 he was elevated to the dignity of Metropolitan by decision of the Holy Council of Bishops.

He made his first visit to the United Kingdom in the very month following this appointment, in January 2017, during which the peacefulness, spiritual joy and genuine love for the Church and his fellow man by which Vladyka Hilarion was universally known, was felt by the local clergy. It was particularly noted by some of the longer-serving Priests that Metropolitan Hilarion chose to begin his tour of the parishes in England with some of the smallest, travelling by car from one parish to the next, concluding his visit at the Cathedral in London — in this way emphasising the importance of the littlest communities as well as the largest, and the equal place they all hold in the hearts of the Church’s Hierarchy.

However, despite his love for the territory and its people, the First Hierarch recognised immediately that he would not be able, alone, to dedicate the time and attention required by the Diocese, given the weight of his primatial responsibilities. He therefore requested of Archbishop Kyrill (Dmitrieff) of San Francisco and Western America that Bishop Irenei of Sacramento (born 1978 in Japan as Matthew Steenberg, of Danish-American descent), one of the Vicar Bishops of the Western American Diocese, who had previously been a Professor of Theology in England, travel with him to the UK and assist him in elements of the Diocese’s pastoral and practical administration. Having taught Patristics, Doctrine and Church History in Oxford and Leeds before being ordained Deacon in 2007 and Priest in 2010, Fr Irenei had subsequently served for nearly seven years as Archimandrite in St Tikhon’s Church in San Francisco (which had been the residence and orphanage church of St John upon his departure from Europe for America), as well as serving as Dean of Monastics for Western America and in various other academic and pastoral capacities. In November 2016 he had been consecrated to the Holy Episcopacy before the relics of St John, serving thereafter as Vicar Bishop in Western America as well as Secretary of the Holy Synod for Inter-Orthodox Relations. With Archbishop Kyrill’s consent, Bishop Irenei first travelled to the Diocese in the role of aid to Metropolitan Hilarion in March 2017, together with the First Hierarch; subsequently he would make visits independently, travelling throughout the Diocese of Great Britain and Ireland, addressing its parishes, ordaining clergy, and attending to various matters in parochial and diocesan life. In June 2017, at the Council of Bishops held in Buchendorf, Germany and at Metropolitan Hilarion’s suggestion, Bishop Irenei was formally appointed as the Administrator of the Diocese of Great Britain and Ireland, to serve under Metropolitan Hilarion as ongoing locum tenens of its office of Ruling Hierarch.

For the next year (2017-2018), the Diocese in the British Isles was thus under the administration of Bishop Irenei of Sacramento and the spiritual headship of Metropolitan Hilarion. For practical reasons, Bishop Irenei could not move from California to the United Kingdom during this period (he remained Vicar Bishop of the Western American Diocese and continued to have responsibilities there), but he made regular visits to the Diocese, dividing his time between the USA and the UK and Ireland.

It was thus that both Dioceses were under the spiritual oversight of the First Hierarch as locum tenens, with Bishop Irenei of Sacramento administrating the British Isles from California and Bishop Nicholas of Manhattan administrating Europe from New York. It was clear that new local headship for the Diocese would soon need to be put in place.

The Synod thanked Metropolitan Hilarion for his period of oversight of the Dioceses in Great Britain and in Europe. Indeed, though his tenure in this role was brief (in the UK, just under two years; and in Europe, just under eight months), the mark he made on the clergy and faithful — especially in England and Wales, where he had been able to visit personally — was profound. He is warmly and prayerfully remembered amongst the litany of Hierarchs of the region, having been a witness to all of peacefulness of heart and prayerful sanctity.

Upon Bishop Irenei’s appointment, it was simultaneously determined that the governance of the united Diocese should take place from London. The new Cathedral had at last been completed, decorated and consecrated — a lasting inheritance of the Archpastorship in the UK of Archbishop Mark — and the parish’s antiquity as one of the oldest communities of the Diocese (having been in continuous existence for more than three centuries, originally founded in 1713) put it in good stead as the central episcopal See.[19] In the practical terms of modern transportation, its proximity to the principal London airports meant a facility of the Ruling Bishop’s travel throughout the large Diocesan territory. Thus the Diocesan cathedra, which across its history had been in Paris, Brussels and Geneva, would henceforth be in London. 

Bishop Irenei was therefore initially given the inherited title of Richmond, which had in preceding generations been used for the ROCOR bishops in London, with the full title of Richmond and Western Europe. Later, by a decision of the Holy Synod of Bishops of 14th / 27th June 2019, it was determined to return to the title ‘Bishop of London’ that had first been used by Bishop Nicholas of London, since the reasons for not employing the London title (treated in the above), which had applied in some of the intervening decades, no longer did so. Thus the historic title was restored to usage, regularising the naming of the Church’s Ruling Hierarchs across all her dioceses in the Diaspora, as well as returning to the usage of the Orthodox Bishops of London in the first millennium.

It became possible for Bishop Irenei of London and Western Europe to relocate from the United States in July 2019, and his flight from California landed in London on the feastday of St Alban, the Protomartyr of Britain (22nd June / 5th July). He resides in West London, serving from the Cathedral of the Nativity of the Mother of God and the Holy Royal Martyrs as his principal cathedra, and the Cathedral of the Exaltation of the Cross in Geneva as the second Cathedral of the Diocese.

Chosen for the role was the long-serving Archpriest of the Vevey parish, Fr Adrian Ecchevaria (born 1956 in Geneva), who had been ordained to the Holy Diaconate in 1996 and Priesthood in 1997 by Bishop Ambrose, at that time Vicar Bishop of Vevey. Archpriest Adrian, thus called to episcopal service in the city of his own previous ordinations, was tonsured into monasticism at the Monastery of St Job in Munich and given the name Alexander, elevated to the dignity of Archimandrite, and subsequently consecrated to the Holy Episcopacy on 6th / 19th January 2019, the Feast of Theophany, at the Cathedral in Geneva.

Unfortunately, Bishop Alexander’s health began to suffer in the years after his episcopal consecration, and already by 2022 his mobility had become increasingly limited. It was thus in early 2024, with the fraternal support of Bishop Irenei, that he petitioned the Holy Synod for retirement, and at its regular session on 21st February / 5th March of that year the Synod granted his request. He was granted the right to continue to serve in the Vevey Parish, though the diocesan vicarial cathedra of Vevey is, at the time of this writing, now vacant and awaits God’s provision of a future Vicar for the Diocese.

Here we arrive at the point where it is impossible for the present study to say more, since Bishop Irenei of London and Western Europe, as well as the retired Archbishop Michael and the retired Bishop Alexander, remain by God’s grace in this life, and the former is the author of the present text. It has been necessary to describe only the details of their appointments and their place in the succession of the Hierarchy of the Diocese; beyond this, we shall leave assessment and commentary to future generations.

What can certainly be said, in concluding even such a limited survey of the episcopal heritage of this God-preserved Diocese, is that the hand of God in the governance of His Church in Europe and the flock of the Diaspora over a century of repeated turmoil, war, division, and reunion, has been patently manifest. The Diocese’s history, like that of the Church Abroad as a whole, began in a period of terror and disarray as a centuries-old culture of Orthodox faith and piety was pressed under the foot of an atheistic regime that would force tens of thousands from their homelands, kill hundreds of thousands — even millions — who could not escape, and deeply destabilise the lives of those connected communities already scattered across the world. This environment created a cultural propensity for flight and division, often manifesting itself in schisms and factionalism; and Europe, whose geographic proximity to the former Russian Empire (and, for most of the twentieth century, the Soviet Union), was particularly hard-hit by such tendencies. The people of God were physically divided, and often contributed to increasing division by their own actions. This temptation touched everyone, from laity to Metropolitans, and at some level we must acknowledge a basic human instinct at play in what were often very trying circumstances. When man finds the world he knows turned upside-down, when the seemingly immovable foundations of his life are torn up, the attempt to ‘take matters into one’s own hands’ often arises, perhaps as an instinctual response of self-preservation. We need rightly and objectively to assess the succumbing to such temptations, but we ought not too harshly judge those who who fall along the way towards a life so different from the one they had known before, or ever expected they would come to see.

Yet the great inspiration of the whole struggle of the ecclesial life of the Russian Orthodox Diaspora in Europe in the past century is that there have been so many who did not succumb, and who were used by God to maintain the legitimate canonical and pastoral life of the Church, and her mission, even through such difficult times. Indeed, the episcopal history of this Diocese shows more: that God uses even those who do falter, overlooking their errors and appointing others to correct them, so that the weakness of man never becomes an abiding cause of weakness in the Church. The self-will that leads towards division will always be with the race of humanity in its sinfulness; but so, too, the piety that leads towards faithful obedience to the Church and God’s governance of her. 

In its century-plus of existence to date, the Diocese has had some twenty Hierarchs in the capacities of Ruling or Vicar Bishops. It has at times been a Metropolitan Region, at others a Diocese, and indeed two Dioceses, as the history of the governance of the British Isles has shown. It has had five Vicariates within its broader territory, some simultaneously, some successively. It has had four named Diocesan Sees: Paris, Brussels, Geneva and London. It has seen short episcopal reigns (the three years and four months of Bishop Nicholas of London, or the two years each of the first Vicar Bishops), as well as long (the nineteen years of Metropolitan Seraphim, the twenty-two of Archbishop Nikodem, the thirty of Archbishop Mark, and the thirty-six of Archbishop Anthony). One of its Ruling Bishops is a canonised saint; three of its Diocesan administrators have been or gone on to become First Hierarchs of the Church Abroad (Metropolitan Vitaly, Metropolitan Hilarion and Metropolitan Nicholas). Indeed, the Orthodox faithful of Great Britain and Western Europe are able to give thanks that, amongst the litany of their Hierarchs, some of the greatest modern examples of Orthodox piety, faith, obedience and stability are to be found. St John ruled from Versailles and Brussels and became a light to enlighten the whole Church. Archbishop Anthony ruled from Geneva and became an example for generations of piety and love. And pious Bishops and Archbishops served from London and Paris and elsewhere, bringing the dignity of the Apostolic office to the faithful, humbly serving and drawing them together in Christ. Under their spiritual headship, the Church stood against Communism, Fascism, Naziism, encroaching and ill-advised ecumenism and syncretism, as well as base human factionalism, schism, and secularism. The faithful have seen profound divisions healed, and in our own days, longstanding schisms overcome. In the midst of a century of profound turmoil, the unwavering light of Christ shone in these humble and pious men of God, whose lives were offered to His Church. If the present study conveys only a tiny glimmer of those lives of divine service, it will have served its intended purpose.

The Russian Orthodox Diaspora in Europe still abides under the hand of Almighty God. While there are some modern schools that dislike the term ‘diaspora’ and feign to attach to it negative connotations of a diminutive subjugation to some foreign origin, the children of the Church Abroad, and certainly those of this Diocese, embrace it openly and gratefully. The term literally means ‘to be dispersed across’ a region, or ‘scattered’, and this precisely describes the identity of the Church in these God-preserved lands. Though in many cases (such as London, Geneva, Bern, the south of France) the presence of the Russian Orthodox faith and parochial structures goes back for centuries, and the Church has long since become ‘local’ in every practical sense — local governance, local peoples that have been Orthodox Christians for generations upon generations, the integration with local cultures, etc. — no Orthodox Christian living in Europe can possibly feel themselves other than part of a sacred body that is, indeed, ‘dispersed’ and ‘scattered’ throughout a world that remains so often hostile towards it, lacking in understanding, and so different in culture, belief and lifestyle. And these remain lands where the distance between one Orthodox parish and the next can often be great, where there is a certain solitude that comes from such distance and separation. Yet from the first, the Church has taken these scattered seeds and, at the hands of her pious Hierarchs, made them fruitful in the spiritual field of her mission in Europe. Saints have walked amongst us in Hierarchical robes, here in these mountains and islands. May all those pious Archpastors continue to pray for us, and continue to guide the Church in Europe in righteousness and piety until the Lord comes again.

* This text is, in some sense, a ‘work in progress’, since research into the past is always advancing — especially as pertains to the earliest years of the diocese, when so much is still, more than a century later, subject to confusion, a paucity of documents, and differing histories of interpretation during the confusions of the twentieth century. Should any errors be discovered in the text, the author invites notification so that future editions can be as accurate as possible. The author wishes to express his gratitude in this regard to Reader Günter Röring for his assistance with the sections on Hierarchs in the Netherlands; and Subdeacon Nicolas Mabin for his assistance with intricate research into the history of Metropolitan Evlogy. All photographs contained herein are believed to be in the Public Domain.

1. These being France, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Monaco, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Gibraltar and Lichtenstein. At the time of this writing (2025), Portugal is the only country within the diocesan territory that does not have active parishes.

2. In the present text I have called upon numerous documents as well as, for the most recent history, the retained oral history of the Diocese. Two studies are of unparalleled value as detailed resources for anyone wishing to know more about the Church Abroad in Europe and in the British Isles: Father Gernot (George) Seide’s History of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia from Its Beginning to the Present (1983, revised 1993: Otto Harrasowitz; translated from the German by Jacqueline Xenia Endres-Nenchin and since made more widely available through the ROCOR Studies foundation) is possibly the most comprehensive study published to date on the history of the ROCOR, including significant sections on Europe and the United Kingdom. Protodeacon Christopher Birchall’s Embassy, Emigrants, and Englishmen: The Three-Hundred-Year History of a Russian Orthodox Church in London (2014: Holy Trinity Publications) is certainly the best study produced on the history of the Church Abroad’s presence in England, containing an unparalleled amount of source materials and analysis. From both of these works I have gratefully and freely drawn many background details, making minor corrections where required; I have refrained, however, from including numerous footnotes in the present text, save for those deemed essential. Those interested in fuller information about the various personages and events outlined in the present study are heartily encouraged to consult both volumes.

3. The complete listing of the fifteen dioceses of the Synod in 1922 was as follows (in the helpful geographical groupings provided by Seide): Western Europe, Finland, Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, and Turkey; Peking, Harbin, Vladivostok, Tokyo, Transbaikal, and Kamchatka; North America, Chicago, and the Aleutians.

4. In the case of London, for example, the parish began life as a chapel of the Imperial Embassy in 1713; in 1877 it was granted a Rector independent of Embassy affairs and thus a formal structure of parochial governance, which had gradually been emerging over the preceding decades (this being Archpriest Eugene Smirnoff, who was the final Rector of the embassy chapel and the first of the parish as such).

4a. The decision to assign Evlogy to care for the parishes of Western Europe was taken by the Administration Abroad in October 1920 or early 1921; Evlogy himself records that the Patriarchal decree no. 414, issued on 26th March / 8th April 1921, confirmed the decision previously taken by the SEA. A week later, on 2nd / 15th April 1921, Metropolitan Anthony’s Decree no. 318 defined this role in more precise geographical terms (e.g. including Bulgaria and Romania in the territory of his care).

4b. Though there is a case to be made that Evlogy himself was never given the title ‘of Western Europe’: it is possible that he retained the title ‘Archbishop/Metropolitan of Volhynia and Zhytomyr’. There is some lack of certainty here requiring more research; but certainly this would have been in line with Evlogy’s own understanding at that time of his role in Europe as provisional, until such time was the Western European parishes could be restored to the care of the Metropolitan of St Petersburg who, as we have noted already, had administrated the parishes abroad prior to the revolution. Yet even this is not entirely clear. The 1922 decree from Moscow on Evlogy’s elevation to Metropolitan (see below) is interesting in that it addresses him as ‘the former Archbishop of Volhynia and Zhytomyr’, with reference to his position as ‘head of the Western European Churches’, without directly assigning him the title. 

4c. Precisely when he moved from Berlin to Paris is unclear: Evlogy’s notes indicate it being at the end of 1921, while the aforementioned Decree 318 indicates he had already established an office in Paris by April of that year. His language is interesting in this period: the April 1921 decree made him temporary administrator in Europe, but with the prerogatives of a diocesan bishop; in already in May of the same year he is referring to Europe as a ‘diocese’ and setting it up as a diocesan administration; see e.g. p. 443 of his memoirs (SVSP, 2014).

4d. Though precisely which organ of the Church was responsible for Archbishop Evlogy’s elevation to Metropolitan in 1922 is a contested question, with answers often often given as points of argumentation for the justification of later ecclesial structures, rather than simply grounded in the history. As it was, Archbishop Evlogy in 1922 was a fully-active member of the Hierarchical administration of the Church Abroad, which at the time proposed the change of title of Hierarchs, their promotion and assignments, etc., all of which were forwarded to the Patriarch for approbation; since, while the Patriarch had blessed the autonomous operation of the Administration abroad, that Administration did not desire to see itself as other than in full fraternal unity with the long-suffering Patriarch and the oppressed Synod within Russia. The flow of articles in the rekindled journal Церковные ведомости bears witness to this ongoing fraternal relationship in the period. It was thus that, as we have described, in 1920/21 the assignment of Archbishop Evlogy to Western Europe was determined by the SEA, and while approved of by the Patriarch, actually took place at the hands of Metropolitan Anthony. Evlogy’s elevation to the rank of Metropolitan was most likely similarly initiated by the Church Abroad, and followed with the approbation of the Patriarch (via a decree dated 14th / 27th January 1922); though by this time Evlogy’s relations with the Synod were already growing tense and he was calling more and more upon those Patriarchal approbations as the true sources of his rank and authority. It is characteristic that in his own recollections he refers only to the Decree from Moscow, and not to the Synod Abroad. This situation was all the more problematic in light of the fact that, in precisely the same period, Patriarch St Tikhon’s administrative freedoms were being heavily curtailed by Bolshevik forces, and his issuance of clearly Soviet-mandated documents (such as his Decree no. 348/9, dated 22nd April / 5th May 1922, in which he called for the disbanding of an administration abroad) were rejected as inauthentic by Evlogy himself (together with their other recipients), who considered them as being ‘undoubtedly composed under duress from the Bolsheviks’, with Metropolitan Evlogy even as late as 1925 proclaiming their composition ‘by a third party, who had forced the Patriarch to sign’ (see Seide, I.3; Archbishop Nikon [Rklitskiy], Жизнеописание блаженнейшего Антония, митрополита Киевского и Галицкого [New York: 1956-69], vol. 6.47-204 and 7.7-32; J. Chrysostomus, Kirchengeschichte Rußlands der neuesten Zeit [München: 1965], vol. 1.186-95; and the journal Церковные ведомости, 1922.6/7,  pp. 11-12). Nevertheless, Evlogy would later turn more and more to the contents of such decrees, especially 348/9 which transferred to him oversight of all the Russian parishes abroad (not only those in Europe). Following this date, the Church within Russia began to refer to him as having ‘jurisdiction over all Russians outside Russia’ (Church Times, 26 May 1922). Needless to say, his persistent rejection from 1922-1925 of such decrees as illegitimate on grounds of having been composed by Bolsheviks and signed only under duress by the Patriarch, and his support of their statements from 1926 onwards, is problematic; as his acting upon the contents of other decree issued in the same period of duress (e.g. Patriarchal Decree no. 106 of November 1923, claiming the Synod Abroad as uncanonical). It seems fair to say that the question of just who had bestowed upon Evlogy his assignments and offices (including his elevation to Metropolitan) was a question swiftly taken up for propagandist purposes on all sides of what became a complex and generations-long debate. The reading given in this study is obviously framed from the perspective of the Church Abroad.

5. Thus Germany, having at first been an integral part of the Western European Diocese (1921-1924) would be a Diocesan Vicariate for two years (1924-1926). Its administration was under Bishop Tikhon of Potsdam, who was therefore a Vicar Bishop of the Western European Diocese before becoming Ruling Bishop of the independent Diocese of Germany; he is therefore rightly listed amongst the litany of past Hierarchs of Western Europe.

6. These being Bishop Vladimir (Tikhonitsky) of Nice and Bishop Sergius (Korolev) of Bely, both of whom had come from Poland in 1924, standing in opposition to the creation of an Autocephalous Polish Orthodox Church. While they were received by the Synod and appointed to these new Vicarial sees, they remained within the Diocese for less than two years and as such are not treated in detail in the present study.

7. This took place in October 2019 when the Moscow Patriarchate — which had the month before received into its auspices Archbishop John (Renneteau), the head of what had become known informally in the decades since the time of Metropolitan Evlogy as the ‘Paris Archdiocese’ or ‘Paris Exarchate’ — also received those clergy under him who wished so to follow (the existing Archdiocese having been disbanded by the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the clergy left without canonical status or obedience, seeking immediately thereafter reception by a Local Church in accordance with the Holy Canons relating to the reception of those who find themselves no longer under Hierarchs in canonical standing with the Church). The Moscow Patriarchate thereafter created of them an Archdiocese of the Patriarchate, comprised of the territory in Western Europe in which their parishes were situated (while two of the most ancient of these parishes, namely those in Florence and Sanremo, had already returned to the Church Abroad’s European Diocese). By this act, Eucharistic communion was simultaneously restored between those parishes, their canonical clergy, and the Church Abroad, which had herself restored full sacramental communion with the Patriarchate — while remaining a self-governing Church with her own Primate and Holy Synod — in May 2007. The children of this Diocese, and indeed of the whole Russian Orthodox Diaspora, can but rejoice and give thanks to God in witnessing the fact of such longstanding divisions being overcome.

8. Though on the elevation of Metropolitan Evlogy, see our lengthy note 4d, above.

9. The 12-day difference between the dates of the old and new calendars, rather than the customary 13-day difference, is due to the fact that the increase of an additional day was not applied in Russia until 1918.

10. It is one of the abiding sorrows of the faithful in Europe that this beloved convent, so long at the heart of the Russian Orthodox Diaspora in Europe and a centre of diocesan spiritual life, departed into schism in 2007 in the period of deep fears over the implications of the restoration of Eucharistic communion with the Patriarchate of Moscow. It remains the fervent prayer of all the children of the Diocese that these fears will in due course be quelled and that the beautiful monastery and its inhabitants may be restored to communion in the Church in the Diocese of its birth.

11. Amongst the best of these is available to those who read French as Saint Jean de Changhaï (1896-1966) et son temps by Bernard le Caro (2nd edn., Lausanne: Editions l’Age d’Homme, 2011).

12. Indeed, documents in the Synodal archives show that the possibility of assigning the Memorial Church in Brussels as the diocesan cathedra was explored, but ultimately rejected by the Holy Synod on grounds that it was not a normal diocesan parish but, at that time, a memorial temple under the Synod itself.

13. Though other, more overtly political factors were also at play in this decision. There was an increasingly pro-Moscow stance taken by many Anglicans in this period, earlier general sympathies towards the Church Abroad (more regularly known locally as the Church ‘in exile’) having shifted in the decades following Metropolitan Evlogy’s break with the Synod. Indeed, the complexities of the administration and affiliation of the various Russian Orthodox communities in Europe, together with the rise of the Cold War and the diplomatic tensions of the Church of England as being a State church intertwined with Government policy and international relations, made Anglican-Orthodox relations in the period — at the social and cultural levels —tense, regularly shifting in dimension and intensity. There are some who interpret the decision not to use titles of significant English cities as being in part motivated by not wanting to disturb the fragile relations with the Anglicans, and thus with English civil authorities; there is likely some merit to this position.

13a. Following a visit of St John to the Netherlands in 1952, and in light of his supportive stance towards the missionary works there, he took the small Dutch mission directly under his pastoral care in the same year. This resulted in additional fledgling communities joining the Diocese in 1954.

14. There is an amusing anecdote, which may have the whiff of truth about it, held in the memory of those in the region, that the title ‘of Hammersmith’ was considered as a replacement for Preston, since the much-loved Podvorie (women’s monastic convent) was located there; however, Russian-speakers’ traditional difficulty with the ‘th’ sound (which doesn’t exist in modern Russian) made this problematic, and nearby Richmond was chosen instead.

15. This being Archimandrite Alexis (Pobjoy). Unfortunately, Archimandrite Alexis departed the Church Abroad in 2007, over concerns relating to the restoration of canonical communion with the Moscow Patriarchate.

16. The first community in the Republic of Ireland was formed in 1972 with the blessing of Archbishop Nikodem, with Fr Nicholas Couriss as its first Priest; under Archbishop Mark, parishes grew in Stradbally (in the Republic) and in Belfast (in Northern Ireland). Parishes were also opened in the north of England (such as St Elizabeth Parish in Wallasey, near Liverpool), in Wales (the Kazan Icon Parish in Cardiff), and in other places.

17. Bishop Barnabas (Prokofiev) was at the time Bishop of Cannes, Vicar Bishop of the Diocese. He had been secretly consecrated in 1980 to minister to the Catacomb Church, within the Soviet Union and without; and in 1990 his consecration was revealed by the Holy Synod and he was appointed in titular fashion to Cannes. The diocesan connection, however, was essentially only formal: in fact, Bishop Barnabas continued his activities within the Soviet Union, which swiftly became problematic. Already by the time of the consecration of Bishop Seraphim, described in the above, he had allied himself with political activism in Russia — which would earn the formal condemnation of the Synod (cf. its Decision of 24th April / 7th May 1993, authored by then-Bishop Hilarion of Manhattan, the future First Hierarch, together with Archpriest Victor Potapov, which, though brief, remains a key document in articulating the Church’s refusal to be drawn into political association of any kind, stating: ‘the Church does not ally itself with any political movement or social organisation whatsoever’ and likewise ‘condemns any demonstration of hatred towards people based either on their ethnic heritage, their political views, or their religious convictions’) — and he would be removed from his role in Moscow by the Synod in late 1993 after seeking union with the so-called ‘Kiev Patriarchate’. Thereafter he was returned to France; but the problems would continue, and in 2001 he was suspended by a Decree of the Synod for various canonical violations, to be restored to normal status only in 2006. He was returned to diocesan status in France at that time and made rector of the parish in Cannes; though he would be removed from that role in December of the same year. In 2014 he was defrocked by the Holy Synod. As his connection to the European Diocese was always, at best, tangential, with most of his efforts and activities aimed elsewhere — apart from his problematic time as Rector in Cannes — we have not treated of him further in the present study.

18. Since Bishop Ambrose would be consecrated as Vicar in Vevey only a week later (see next section), it was decided that rather than have two Hierarchs named to sees less than an hour one from another (Geneva is only on the other side of Lake Léman from Vevey), the Ruling Bishop would revert to the title of Brussels, the Vicar for Switzerland to Vevey, and the Vicar for the southern region would maintain the title of Cannes.

19. The London Cathedral traces its origin to the arrival of Metropolitan Arsenius and Archimandrite Gennadius in England; see Birchall, p. 10, in which he notes that the year 1713 ‘effectively marks the beginning of the Orthodox Church in London, serving both Greeks and Russians, which later became attached to the Imperial Russian Embassy.’ The tricentenary of the Cathedral parish was celebrated in 2013 and marked by the launch of Protodeacon Christopher’s study of its history the following year.