The Orthodox Christian community under Constantinople in Lithuania has been granted official recognition by the government. It now says it will focus on building a church structure and is waiting for a decision on financial support from the state.
After the Justice Ministry concluded that the new religious community could be registered, the exarchate of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Lithuania was entered into the Register of Legal Entities on Wednesday. “The reaction can only be unequivocally positive. We have been seeking and waiting for this,” said priest Vitalijus Mockus on February 8. “We prayed and hoped for a positive decision.”
He points out that the community of the Patriarchate of Constantinople is not in fact new in Lithuania as it is being reestablished after several hundred years. Following its registration, the religious community will focus on building up its structures. “We have to organize an assembly – a meeting of all the representatives of the clergy and the communities – and then we will continue our work on the basis of the statutes. We need to set up various governing bodies. These are the steps that follow the legal registration, and we could not do anything before it,” the cleric said.
The establishment of the new church structure was completed in early January with the arrival of Estonian priest Justinus Kiviloo, head of the new exarchate. Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople announced his intention to set up a church structure in Lithuania during his visit to the country last March after he reinstated five priests who used to belong to the Lithuanian Orthodox Church that is subordinate to the Patriarchate of Moscow.
They were defrocked by the Lithuanian Orthodox Archdiocese in 2022 for alleged canonical offenses, but Constantinople later ruled that they were punished for their position on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, not for breaking the canonical rules. Government recognition will allow the exarchate to receive financial support from the state, which is distributed by the Finance Ministry to traditional religious communities at the beginning of each year.
Mockus doesn’t know whether his community will receive such funding as early as this year.
At least part of the state funding will depend on the number of members of the new religious community. According to the 2021 census, there are about 105,000 Orthodox Christians in Lithuania, but the new exarchate shares this number with the Orthodox Archdiocese of Lithuania, which is subordinate to the Moscow Patriarchate.
Mockus says it is difficult to say exactly how many members the new Orthodox community has in Lithuania. The priest estimates that some 15-20 percent of the clergy have left the Moscow-subordinate church, so the number of members of the new community could be similar.
Many of the faithful have not been aware of the new exarchate, so he hopes that once the community is registered, more people will become aware of it and will want to join it.
Approached for comment on the newly registered community, the Orthodox Archdiocese of Lithuania shared Metropolitan Inokentiy’s comments to the Orthodox Lithuania newspaper.
“A new picture of religious life is emerging in Lithuania. This phenomenon must be accepted as a reality of our time,” he was quoted as saying, adding that the canonical existence of the archdiocese in Lithuania is unquestioned in the Orthodox world.
“The presence of our Church here goes back more than 300 years, including the first period of Lithuania’s independence. It should be noted that in the 1980s, Metropolitan Chrysostomos, now Metropolitan Emeritus, and other clergy of our Orthodox Church in particular, supported Lithuania’s independence aspiration. Our position has not changed in the slightest since then,” Inokentiy said.
The metropolitan also stressed that the Church under his leadership recognizes its responsibility for maintaining peace and harmony in society. “More and more people, including refugees from Ukraine, are coming to our houses of worship, taking an active part in the spiritual life of our Church, and thanking us for our goodwill and help.”
The new exarchate will include a total of ten clergy and ten congregations in different Lithuanian towns. The new community, which is currently using houses of worship of other denominations, will eventually have its own house of prayer, which it hopes to build with donations. Orthodox Christians in Lithuania are considered one of nine traditional religious communities.
