On February 8, the Ministry of Justice of Lithuania registered a brand new spiritual construction – an exarchate, which will probably be subordinated to the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Thus, two Orthodox church buildings will probably be formally acknowledged within the nation: one belonging to the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the present diocese of the Moscow Patriarchate in Lithuania.
The brand new spiritual group has ten clergy and plans to kind governing our bodies within the close to future. It’s now led by the Estonian priest Justinus Kiviloo, who held his first service in Lithuania in the beginning of January 2024. The remaining clergymen beforehand served within the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC): six in Lithuania, two in Belarus and one in Russia.
Patriarch Kirill’s assist for the Russian Federation’s battle towards Ukraine is the rationale for the creation of the brand new exarchate. This place led to a battle between 9 clerics and the management of the Russian Orthodox Church. In 2022, Vilnius and Lithuania Metropolitan Harmless eliminated 5 of them from ministry, and Patriarch Bartholomew reinstated them and accepted them below his jurisdiction. In March 2023, Patriarch Bartholomew visited Vilnius and signed an settlement with the Lithuanian authorities to determine the Exarchate of the Patriarchate of Constantinople within the nation.
The Diocese of the ROC in Lithuania reacted calmly to the looks of the brand new church. Metropolitan Harmless stated that the brand new spiritual group should be accepted as a “actuality of our time”.
Native media have famous that for the reason that begin of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the ROC diocese in Lithuania has sought higher independence from the Moscow Patriarchate.
There are 105,000 Orthodox believers in Lithuania, most of whom are Russian-speaking. Orthodox Christians are thought-about one of many 9 conventional spiritual communities within the nation.