St. Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow
Editor’s note: Last year, Scott Kenworthy (whose landmark biography of St Tikhon comes out in November and is available now for preorder) sent me a remarkable email. He had discovered a letter written by Patriarch Tikhon to Patriarch Gregory IV of Antioch in 1922, dealing with the jurisdiction of Syrians/Antiochians in North America. The letter was in Russian, so I sent it to Sam Noble, who translated it into English. Click here to download the original Russian letter. The full translation is below, but before we get to that, I asked Scott to write a short introduction, giving context to the letter. Here’s Scott:
St. Tikhon was elected to the patriarchate of the Orthodox Church of Russia shortly after the Bolsheviks seized power in October 1917. Within a short time, Patriarch Tikhon found himself defending the Church against Bolshevik efforts to destroy it. The Russian Archdiocese in North America was also thrown into disarray. The ruling bishop had gone to Russia for the 1917 Council and did not return to America and the diocesan administration fell to the vicar Bishop of Canada, Alexander (Nemolovsky). The Archdiocese was financially dependent upon Russia, and after the Revolution, and Bishop (later Archbishop) Alexander struggled with the financial collapse of the diocese. A group of vocal detractors began to agitate against him, causing division among his flock. Until 1917, the Russian Archdiocese was multi-ethnic, including in its jurisdiction Syrian, Serbian, and other Orthodox Christians in North America. Even before the Revolution, following the death of St. Raphael Hawaweeny in 1915, a division emerged among the Syrians between the “Russy,” who wished to remain under the Russian Archdiocese, and the “Antacky,” who wished to go under the Patriarchate of Antioch. This division intensified after the Bolshevik Revolution and the subsequent disarray in the Russian Church. A visiting Antiochian metropolitan, Germanos Shehadi of Baalbek, began to take parishes under his omophorion (without any authorization from the Holy Synod of Antioch). In 1917, more than two years after the death of St. Raphael, the Russian Archdiocese chose his replacement, Bishop (later Archbishop) Aftimios Ofiesh. The “Antacky” and “Russy” factions now each had their own hierarch.
During the period when the Russian Archdiocese in North America was plagued by these divisions, Russia was plunged into Civil War from mid-1918 until early 1921. Patriarch Tikhon was effectively completely cut off from communication with anyone outside Soviet-controlled Russia and therefore had no information about what was transpiring in North America. Only in 1921, after the Civil War was over and Patriarch Tikhon was able to establish minimal communication with the outside world through secret diplomatic channels through Riga especially with Metropolitan Evlogy (Georgievsky) in Paris, did he learn of the difficulties that Archbishop Alexander faced. Tikhon wanted to send an authoritative bishop that he trusted to set matters aright and asked Metropolitan Evlogy to go to America, though Evlogy was reluctant to go and Archbishop Platon (Rozhdestvensky) went on his own initiative in 1922. Even with the news he received about the problems in the Russian Archdiocese in 1921, St Tikhon was unaware of the divisions among the American Syrian Orthodox until Metropolitan Evlogy forwarded this letter to him. In this important letter, Patriarch Tikhon indicated that, under the circumstances of chaos and division in the Orthodox Church in North America, he agreed that the best solution for the Orthodox Syrians in America was for them to go under the Patriarchate of Antioch along with “other branches of the Orthodox Church in North America.” St Tikhon sent the letter to Evlogy, who in turn sent it to Metropolitan Antony (Khrapovitsky) to send to Patriarch Gregory. The letter was first published in the periodical of the Church Abroad, Tserkovnye Vedomosti No. 5 (15/28 May, 1922).
Patriarch Gregory IV of Antioch (1906-1928)
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Letter of His Holiness Tikhon
To the Most Holy Patriarch Gregory
17(30) January, 1922
Your Beatitude,
Most Blessed and Most Holy Father Gregory,
Patriarch of Antioch and All the East
Your Holiness’ touching fraternal letter dated 14/27 August, 1921, which we only received a few days ago, deeply touched us with the sincere feelings expressed therein, undiminished by the many trials that have befallen the Russian Church, your prayerful commemoration and love for her and for ourselves. Since the restoration of the patriarchate in Russia and the election, according to the will of God by the Holy Council of the Church of All Russia, as patriarch, during our divine services the name of Your Beatitude, the high and worthy head of our sister Holy Church of Antioch, is lifted up without ceasing. We have always been confident that, despite the interruption of relations between our Churches imposed by the events of recent years, the Syrian Church, led by its wise and noble spiritual leader, the most reverend Patriarch Gregory, unceasingly accompanies suffering Russia and her church with her prayer and blessing, and does not change her benevolent and trustingly grateful relations with her, despite the impossibility that has arisen for the Russian Orthodox flock to console itself by providing—as had always earlier been the case—material assistance to her beloved sister Syrian Church. And this confidence of ours is now confirmed in Your fraternal letter of August 14/27, 1921, sent as an addition to and clarification of Your first letter—which was, unfortunately, not received by us—of October 28, 1919, concerning the state of ecclesiastical affairs in North America.
We ourselves cannot but grieve, along with Your Beatitude, that the peaceful construction of the holy work of the Orthodox spiritual mission of the Syrian Church in North America is suffering sorrows and difficulties and that passion and partisanship have entered into the activities of some of its workers, which are destructive [lit. fatal] for the work and cause so much grief to Your Beatitude’s caring heart and to all who avoid divisions and are zealous for ecclesiastical peace. The only material on this subject that we have at our disposal so far is the information from Your letter and the extract attached to the latter from the letter of October 28, 1919. And, sincerely bowing before the wisdom of Your Beatitude and Your Holy Synod, we welcome Your apostolic zeal and prudence in determining Your position on this sensitive issue and Your decisions about it. Our lack of communication with our spiritual mission in North America—from which only very recently messages have started to arrive and to which we are sending His Eminence Metropolitan Evlogy to organize local ecclesiastical life—has until now not given us the opportunity to find out the views of the leaders of the Russian spiritual mission in N. America about this question, and we, so as not to sin by haste, send a request there: what could be undertaken most painlessly for the most peaceful settlement of the path by which the further success of the spiritual missions of both holy Churches—the Russian and the Syrian—could be accomplished, and we express our conviction that the representatives of the Russian spiritual mission in North America will wholeheartedly join in our most sincere wish for peace and love and the elimination of the divisions and partisanship that have arisen among the members and hierarchy of the Syrian Church in America. For we, together with the hierarchs of the Holy Synod of the Holy Russian Church, with whom we made an assessment about the content of Your letter, pray to God for one thing: that He grant peace and spiritual wellbeing to the Syrian Church in Syria and America. And for the sake of this most blessed peace, we are prepared, for reasons of expediency and because of the analogous arrangement of other branches of the holy Orthodox Church in North America, to not consider the natural subordination of the Syrian Spiritual Mission in North America directly to the Patriarchal See of Antioch to be unfeasible, inasmuch, as was expressed by You and Your Holy Synod in Lebanon on August 13, this will not violate the fundamental ecclesial-canonical traditions and can heal the ulcers of division that have now arisen within the American Syrian spiritual mission and inasmuch as this does not cause harm and injustice to the good disposition on the part of the Syrian spiritual mission headed by His Grace Bishop Aftimios. Your Beatitude’s actions in this direction, which have been compelled by considerations of the real benefit and good of the Church will not, of course, be misinterpreted by us.
May our prayers be pleasing to our Chief Shepherd, the Lord Jesus Christ. Please accept greetings in the Lord from the entire Holy Russian Church to our elder sister, the holy Antiochian Church and to Your Beatitude for the great Feast of Christ’s Nativity and the Theophany of the Lord.
Your Beatitude, devoted Brother in Christ and sincere pilgrim
Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia
January 17(30), 1922
Moscow
No. 76
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The rest of the story is that, later in 1922, Patriarch Gregory sent a three-man delegation to America: Metropolitan Gerasimos Messara of Beirut, Archimandrite Victor Abo-Assaly, and Archdeacon Antony Bashir. The delegation was ostensibly coming to attend the general convention of the Episcopal Church, in Portland, Oregon. But the real reason was to establish the Antiochian Archdiocese of North America, which they did over the next two years. Archimandrite Victor became the first archbishop, and years later, after Victor’s death, Antony Bashir succeeded him. Unfortunately, though, this didn’t resolve the divisions among the Antiochians of North America. Bishop Aftimios Ofiesh rejected the new Antiochian Archdiocese and continued to lead the Russy faction. Metropolitan Germanos Shehadi remained in America, although he lost most of his Antacky parishes to the new Archdiocese. To read more of the rest of the story of the Antiochians, check out my 2022 article on Antiochian metropolitan elections.