As of: March 18, 2024, 11:59 a.m
From: Foreign Policy
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The Russian Orthodox Church is poaching believers from the Patriarchate of Alexandria.
But this is not just a religious war.
The Russian Orthodox Church is poaching priests in Africa from the Patriarchate of Alexandria - and is promising material support
Moscow is at war with the Patriarchate of Alexandria after Constantinople agreed to the secession of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church
The former Wagner Group is now also active in Africa under a new name
This article is available for the first time in German - it was first published by
Foreign Policy
magazine on March 12, 2024 .
Moscow/Alexandria - All eyes are on Russia's territorial expansion - but it is not the only one.
In Africa, the Russian Orthodox Church is pioneering church expansion.
Through gifts - and not through theological persuasion - she wins priests and congregations of the Alexandrian Patriarchate, which is spread throughout Africa.
The Moscow Patriarchate's poaching of African Orthodox Christians is less strange than it might seem, because it is a geopolitical move - and part of an ongoing struggle within the Orthodox Church over Ukraine.
J. Peter Pham is one of the most experienced Africa experts in the United States - an ordained priest with a doctorate in theology and a degree in canon law, as well as other qualifications in economics, political science and international law.
When Pham travels to Africa, where he served as U.S. special envoy to the Great Lakes region and as the Trump administration's first Sahel envoy, he visits churches and speaks with other clergy of all denominations.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian Orthodox cleric Patriarch Kirill in 2018. © IMAGO / ITAR-TASS
Russian church poaches believers in Africa
In recent months, Pham has witnessed an extraordinary development.
“I had heard that the Moscow Patriarchate was poaching priests from the Patriarchate of Alexandria,” he says.
“Whenever I traveled to the areas where I had heard about it, I began to investigate.
And it turns out it wasn't just one or two isolated cases.
These were a large number of African Orthodox clergy who belonged to the Patriarchate in Alexandria and had been recruited by the Moscow Patriarchate.
It was very systematic.”
As their names suggest, the Patriarchate of Alexandria and the Patriarchate of Moscow are related.
The Patriarchate of Alexandria, based in the famous Egyptian port city, looks after the Eastern Orthodox Christians of the African continent, with the exception of traditionally Orthodox Ethiopia, where the number of believers is estimated at around one million.
Patriarchates of Moscow and Alexandria: Both belong to the Eastern Orthodox Church
Patriarchy has a long history, dating back to the time of Jesus Christ and Mark the Evangelist.
Like the Russian Orthodox Church, the Greek Orthodox Church of Alexandria belongs to the Eastern Orthodox Church, which is subordinate to the Patriarchate of Constantinople.
Traditionally, Alexandria is located immediately after Constantinople and has oversight of Orthodox Christians throughout the African continent.
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The Moscow Patriarchate, which according to its official title presides over the Orthodox believers in “Moscow and all Rus,” cannot claim comparable historical origins.
But for centuries it has been one of Orthodoxy's virtually most powerful bodies, and today has greater power than most religious denominations.
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Church in Ukraine became independent from Russia
Not only does the Russian Orthodox Church have around 90 million members in Russia and other former Soviet republics, but it is also so closely tied to the Russian state that it effectively functions as an arm of the government.
Patriarch Kirill, who like his predecessor Alexy II was a KGB spy for the Soviet authorities, enthusiastically supported the war in Ukraine.
But the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has stood against Kirill and his patriarchy - supported by Patriarch Bartholomew himself. Bartholomew is the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople and therefore "first among equals" in Orthodoxy, although he is based in one city, Istanbul , where there are almost no Orthodox believers left.
The Patriarchate of Constantinople owes its status to the fact that it was once the heart of the city of Byzantium.
Its practical power and funding rest on the fact that two-thirds of American Orthodox Christians are under its jurisdiction.
Moscow breaks with Constantinople after the Ukrainian Church secedes
In 2019, Bartholomew issued a decree allowing the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to secede from the Moscow Patriarchate.
When the decree was being prepared in October 2018, Moscow declared that it would no longer be in communion with Constantinople and broke with other patriarchates, including Alexandria, in the following months.
The Russian authorities began to spy on and harass the Patriarchate in Constantinople, which is very vulnerable due to its insecure situation in Turkey.
But despite strong pressure from Moscow, Bartholomew has reiterated his support for Ukraine.
“The desire for unity and cooperation has been destroyed by a new ecclesiology coming from the North: a new theology of war, taught by the sister church of Russia, which seeks to justify an unjustified, unholy, unprovoked, diabolical war,” he explained last September.
Lucrative business: Russian Wagner Group active in Africa under a new name
He continued: “It was the right and duty of the Ecumenical Patriarchate to grant autocephaly [ecclesial independence] to the Church of Ukraine with its 44 million people.
We have no intention of subjecting the decisions and initiatives of the Patriarchate to the judgment of this new ecclesiology.” Most other Patriarchates have followed the example of Constantinople, including Alexandria.
With little chance of changing the rest of the orthodoxy, Moscow has turned to Africa.
In recent years, the Russian government - usually with the support of the Wagner Group, now renamed the Volunteer Corps - has aggressively expanded relations with African governments.
Wagner supports the regime and is rewarded not only with money, but also with lucrative business opportunities.
Over 200 African priests have joined the Russian Church
And for about 18 months now, Russian Orthodox bishops and priests have been heading to Africa in search of new opportunities.
They are not looking for trade contracts, but for priests who can be persuaded to defect from Alexandria to Moscow.
The defections strengthen Russia in Africa and allow Kirill to strike a blow against Bartholomew and those who, like Patriarch Theodoros II of Alexandria, support Bartholomew's recognition of the independence of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.
Moscow’s ecclesiastical campaign in Africa is no secret: in 2022, the Moscow Patriarchate established an “African Exarchate” based in Moscow.
According to Bishop Constantine of Zaraisk in Russia, the acting exarch, more than 200 African priests have joined the Russians.
Pham has spoken to several of them in Central and East Africa.
The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I, has been awarded the “Tutzinger Lion”.
© dpa
African Exarchate: Russian Church impresses with material support
“In theory, the Russians' recruitment of African Orthodox priests is based on canonical arguments about the appropriateness of Constantinople's recognition of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and Alexandria's consent to this decision,” Pham explained.
“But none of the African Orthodox priests I spoke to made such reasons to me.
If most of them had anything negative to say about the Patriarchate of Alexandria, it was the lack of material support.”
In an interview published on the Exarchate website on February 25, Bishop Constantine addressed these material needs: “In one place, for example, the purchase of a tent is an urgent matter, while in another place a land problem is being resolved must, or it's about premises and maybe even a church building.
… We need to see what can be done and find financial and human resources.”
Russian clergy take advantage of the Church of Alexandria's power deficit
Pham recently spoke to an Orthodox priest in eastern Congo who decided to join the Russians, “and it was about getting a motorcycle so he could get around.
Others have received a roof for the church or help starting a chicken farm.
These are legitimate needs, but they hardly rise to the level of a theological or canonical principle.”
It may be that the Patriarchate of Alexandria has not paid attention to the needs of its communities, or that it simply does not have the resources to help.
Like Constantinople, it enjoys historic status but has little power in its home country of Egypt, where the roughly 300,000 remaining Orthodox Christians are a tiny minority.
Be that as it may, the Russian clergy have recognized an opportunity and are taking advantage of it.
Impeachment in response – risk of dispute with Russian government
When the Patriarchate of Alexandria removed Moscow's first exarch from office, Moscow simply appointed a second bishop to the office.
Last month, Alexandria also removed him from office after he founded a church in Cairo - a city that has been part of the Patriarchate of Alexandria since the times of St. Mark the Evangelist.
So far, two other Russian priests in the “Exarchate” have also been removed from office.
In the interview on his exarchate's website, Constantine unsurprisingly defended ecclesiastical expansion and blamed Constantinople.
He recently led a delegation of Russian clergy to Africa, where they visited some of the newly converted priests and their congregations.
Constantine also baptized 30 Tanzanians.
Crucially, the Exarchate also supports Russia's interests in Africa.
If the Patriarch of Alexandria tried to act more forcefully, he would risk a dispute with the powerful Russian government.
The first Russian Orthodox communities were recognized in Central Africa
It is an incredible coincidence that this ecclesiastical expansion is taking place in parallel with Russia's other efforts in Africa.
“My conclusion is that this is an orchestrated attempt by an arm of the Russian state to exploit real-world conditions to achieve a propaganda victory and gain influence in another area, the ecclesiastical one,” Pham said.
The Central African Republic was the first African country to host the Wagner Group and to legally recognize communities that moved from Alexandria to Moscow.
The Patriarchate of Alexandria has experienced many turmoil in the two millennia of its existence.
The founder of the Patriarchate, Mark the Evangelist, was brutally murdered in the port city.
In the 5th century, the early Christian Council of Chalcedon led to a schism that subsequently led large numbers of Christians in Egypt to leave the Patriarchate of Alexandria and establish the Coptic Church.
Droughts, coups and civil wars have cost the lives of African Orthodox Christians.
Believers were persecuted and killed by Muslim rulers.
Nevertheless, the Patriarchate of Alexandria has remained steadfast, not only in Egypt but throughout the African continent.
However, in Moscow it faces a new and even more powerful opponent from the ranks of its own church.
About the author
Elisabeth Braw
is a columnist at Foreign Policy, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and the author of Goodbye Globalization.
Twitter (X): @elisabethbraw
We are currently testing machine translations. This article was automatically translated from English into German.
This article was first published in English in the magazine “ForeignPolicy.com” on March 12, 2024 - as part of a cooperation, it is now also available in translation to readers of the IPPEN.MEDIA portals.