Paul Goble
Staunton, April 30 – The Republic of the Congo has given the exarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate official registration, the third African country to do so. Earlier, Cameroun and Madagascar took the same step, and an indication of the expansion of the Moscow church in sub-Saharan Africa.
Since 2021, when Moscow created an exarchate on what has been the Alexandria Patriarchate’s canonical territory, the ROC MP has increased its presence there from four countries to more than 30, the number of clerics has grown to 270, and the number of parishes now stands at 350 (tass.ru/obschestvo/27272251 and rusk.ru/newsdata.php?idar=121586).
The Russian church says that it has taken these steps to provide spiritual aid to Russians now working in Africa and to Africans who have converted to Orthodox Christianity, but critics have long suggested that the Moscow church has made these moves to obscure its losses elsewhere and to provide cover for Russian intelligence operations.
(For background, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/09/moscow-claims-to-have-recruited-more.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/09/moscows-claims-about-russian-orthodox.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/12/moscow-patriarchate-says-it-has.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/03/moscow-patriarchate-has-moved-into.html,)
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