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On October 20, a meeting of the Latvian Orthodox Church was held in the All Saints Church in Riga with the participation of clergy and laity. There were two items on the agenda: an appeal to Patriarch Kirill of Moscow to grant the Latvian Orthodox Church the status of an autocephalous church and, secondly, making the relevant amendments to its statutes. The meeting was held with the participation of the Metropolitan of Riga and All Latvia Alexander (Kudryashkov). The decisions were adopted with 160 votes “for” and one “against”.
In practice, the letter has a notification nature. It is necessary so that the separation from the Moscow Patriarchate can be canonical and not considered a schism.
We remind you that on September 8 of this year, the Latvian Parliament adopted amendments to the Law “On the Latvian Orthodox Church”, which change its status, determining that it will function independently and autonomously.
Until now, the Latvian Orthodox Church was subordinate to the Moscow Patriarchate.
“When the law goes into effect, any influence or authority of the Moscow Patriarch over our Orthodox Church will be removed. Refusal of any ties with the Moscow Patriarch is an important issue for our Orthodox Christians, for the entire Latvian society and for national security,” the president emphasized at the time.
For its part, the Latvian Orthodox Church itself for some time did not comment on its new independent status, as stated in the law. It wasn’t until Friday evening, September 9, that the Latvian Church published a statement on its website in which it basically claimed that nothing would change for the congregation.
“This decision is of a legal nature and the adopted changes refer to the legal status of the church. The state has defined the status of our church as autocephalous. The state has determined that the Latvian Orthodox Church is legally independent from any ecclesiastical center outside of Latvia, while maintaining spiritual, prayer and liturgical communion with all canonical Orthodox churches in the world. The change of status does not change the Orthodox faith, dogmas, liturgical life of the church, calendar style, sacred liturgical language, rites, traditions or the internal life of the church,” the official announcement states.
On Tuesday, September 22, the Cabinet of Ministers authorized the Minister of Justice Janis Bordans to approach the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Kirill on behalf of the Latvian state to inform him about the amendments to the Law on the Church of Latvia adopted by the Parliament.
The Latvian Church has until October 31 to introduce the relevant amendments to its statutes.
As in the case of the Ukrainian Church, the Moscow Patriarchate ignored these decisions, continuing to consider the Latvian Church part of its structure in the hope that after the end of the war the processes could be changed.
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