A journalist from News.ru (Russia) submitted the following question to the Patriarchate of Alexandria: “The Exarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church has been registered in Kenya. This became known only during the visit of His Holiness the Patriarch of Alexandria to Kenya. How does the Patriarchate of Alexandria perceive the activities of the Russian Church in Kenya? As well as the activities of the Russian Church in Africa in general. How does the Patriarchate of Alexandria feel about this? Thank you”.
The answer given is as follows:
The Moscow Patriarchate, imbued with highly authoritarian tendencies to rule over the entire Orthodoxy, wanting to rule monarchically and draw Orthodoxy under its power by abolishing the entire theological and canonical tradition of the Orthodox Church, appeared with a vengeance in Africa and entered it meanly, a thief in the night, defying the age-old ecclesiastical institutions and the Holy Rules of the Church under heaven. This primarily reveals his own spiritually unhealthy course and his ecclesiological deviation from Orthodox traditions.
The action of the Moscow Patriarchate outside the limits of its ecclesiastical jurisdiction injures the brotherly love, the unity and the innocence of our Orthodox faith and certainly contributes decisively to the scandal of Orthodoxy. Of course, the Moscow Patriarchate, obsessed with the hurts of its traumatic past and highly selfish attitudes of past times, is tightly embraced with the State and the political pursuits of the respective echelons of the Russian state, which at all costs creates spheres of influence in Africa as well, with results always very painful for the Orthodox Russian people, as history teaches.
The Apostolic Patriarchate of Alexandria will continue to minister to the whole of Africa, where the Apostolic Legacy, the Holy Canons and history have ordered it, always with the suffering African people in mind and with the unshakable faith that the work of Evangelization and lightning the burden of the peoples will continue, because it has Apostolic roots, it is not an ephemeral, self-centered, authoritative ecclesiastical-political game. For the Alexandrian Church, the African brother is a living and holy image of God and not a being to be used, exploited and for complex self-affirmation.
From the Chief Secretary of the Holy Synod