“SYNOD IN EXILE”

“SYNOD IN EXILE”. Known also as the Karlovci Synod from the name of the city in northern Serbia where they first convened, this Synod was comprised of Russian bishops who fled their dioceses during the course of the Revolution, and took refuge first in Constantinople and then in Karlovci as guests of the Serbian patriarch. Headed by Metropolitan Antonii Khrapovitsky (q.v.), formerly of Kiev, the group proclaimed itself the “Supreme Ecclesiastical Administration Outside of Russia,” based on a decree of Patriarch Tikhon Belavin (q.v.), which allowed for dioceses separated from the patriarch by the front lines of war to be temporarily independent (20 November 1920, No. 362). Such a decree was not intended to apply to bishops who had abandoned their dioceses, nor was it to establish an “Administration.”

On 5 May 1922 the patriarch dissolved the group (No. 398) and appointed Metropolitan Evlogii Georgievskii (q.v.) as the administrator of all parishes in Europe. When Evlogii and Metropolitan Platon Rozhdestvensky in the United States not only recognized the group’s continued existence, but cooperated with it to keep peace in the church, the Synod attempted to exercise control over both of them-whereupon official relations were broken in 1926. The Synod then appointed its own bishop of the North American diocese, and has continued to do so until the present. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, none of the bishops, most of whom live in the United States, have returned to Russia, so the title “In Exile” is an anachronism. They maintain one monastery on Mt. Athos (q.v.) and another together with a seminary in Jordanville, New York. They have recently attempted to start parishes in Russia to compete with those of the Moscow Patriarchate and do not maintain a relationship with any other canonical Orthodox church, thus increasing their isolationist and sectarian stand in the Orthodox oikoumene (q.v.).