Address to the Faithful

Beloved in Christ fathers brothers and sisters in the homeland and abroad!

We the archpastors of the ROCA gathered this year for the Sobor of Bishops at the Monastery of St. John of Shanghai in Kiev, the birthplace of St. Theodosius of the caves.

We trust that the sessions of the meeting were under the prayerful intercession of the Saints of Russia glorified in these latter times by the ROCA.

This intercession was made manifest first, by the celebration of the hierotonia of the mitred archpriest Peter Semovskih, who received the monastic tonsure with the name Philaret, in honor of St. Philaret the confessor - his spiritual guide. His grace Philaret was consecrated for the see of Sydney and Australia. Now, our seemingly small Church Abroad has spread to nearly every continent.

The primary task of the sobor, as all sobors, was the defense of the true teaching of Holy Orthodox Church, regarding not only internal occurrences, but those in the world at large. Each zealous true believer of the Church awaits the outcome of each sobor as an affirmation for themselves and all faithful in the true unblemished faith and grace of our Orthodox Church.

The importance of the sobor is all the more great in these times when the schismatic groups, the agathangelites, TROC and RAOC having joined the Sergianists, fight against the rebirth of Orthodoxy in Russia. Along with the Sergianists are other workers to this end, these being the distributors of personal opinion and writings - those who chose not to base their lives on the accepted theological works of the Orthodox Church.

Judging by the process evident in our much suffering homeland, Sergianism, just like the Soviet ideology and the post-soviet regime, will be defended by law, as is communist teaching.

In recent times, among the Church faithful, there has flourished an idea of false humility before apostasy, rather than staunch defense of our true church, which is akin to blasphemy. When someone attempts to take our true teaching from us, replacing it with false teaching, it is an attempt to sway us from the true path.

The enemies of the Orthodox Church continue to use this in attempt to accuse us of pride and self-glory.

It is prudent to recall the words of Archbishop Averky (Tauschev):

We glorify not ourselves rather our holy faith - our pure undefiled Orthodox faith - that straight uncompromised path which our Church follows setting as the goal - to lose nothing from the spiritual treasures of the Apostolic and Fore-bearers Orthodoxy - and to save our spiritual freedom. Our treasure is the bright, pure, clear path of the Russian Church Abroad!

Dear children of the Church Abroad! We call our Lord’s blessing on you and pray you will never sway from this path!

PRESIDENT OF THE SOBOR:

+Vladimir, Archbishop of San Francisco and Western America

MEMBERS:

+Anastassy, Bishop of Vladivostok and the Far East

+Victor, Bishop of St. Petersburg and Northern Russia

+Alexei, Bishop of Soltanov and Lesser Russia

+Tikhon, Bishop of Vasilkovsk, Vicar to Lesser Russia

+Martine, Bishop of Istra and Southern Russia

+Cassian, Bishop of Marseilles and Western Europe

+Ambrose, Bishop of Denver, Vicar to Western America

+Philaret, Bishop of Sydney and Australia