ROCOR Encyclical on Canonical Communion

ENCYCLICAL

№: 06.39.11

June 7/20, 2011

To all clergy of the Eastern American Diocese

At the last meeting of the ROCOR Sobor of Bishops, the Sobor resolved that one outcome of our unification with the Moscow Patriarchate was the normalization of relations with other Orthodox Churches. Although as a result of prior rivalries between the MP and ROCOR and other reasons, relations with a majority of the Churches has been absent de facto for decades now, they were never broken off de jure, and therefore no formal restoration of them is required. ROCOR, as an inseparable part of the Russian Orthodox Church, is in Eucharistic communion with all of the remaining canonical Local Orthodox Churches:

• The Orthodox Church of Constantinople
• The Orthodox Church of Alexandria
• The Orthodox Church of Antioch
• The Orthodox Church of Jerusalem
• The Georgian Orthodox Church
• The Serbian Orthodox Church
• The Romanian Orthodox Church
• The Bulgarian Orthodox Church
• The Cypriot Orthodox Church
• The Orthodox Church of Greece
• The Albanian Orthodox Church
• The Polish Orthodox Church
• The Czech and Slovak Orthodox Church
• The Orthodox Church in America

In accordance with Church rules, in order to concelebrate with clergy from other Orthodox Churches, just as with clergy from other ROCOR dioceses, clerics must have the blessing of their hierarch and the other Church’s local hierarch. Traveling clerics are reminded that many churches require proof of said blessing in written form.

With love in Christ,

+HILARION
Metropolitan of Eastern America & New York,
First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia

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