The Tomos of Autocephaly (1970): The Orthodox Church in America

In April 1970 the Moscow Patriarchate granted autocephaly to its former North American daughter, the “Metropolia,” which thereby became the Orthodox Church in America (OCA). The grant healed a decades-long Russian schism but opened a still-unresolved pan-Orthodox dispute over who may rightly create a self-governing Church — a dispute that recognizably foreshadows the 2018–2019 conflict over Ukraine.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (North American context)

Background: The Metropolia and Moscow

The body that became the OCA descended from the Russian Orthodox mission to North America, whose roots reached back to the 1794 Valaam mission to Alaska and whose diocesan structure was built up under St. Tikhon (Bellavin) at the turn of the twentieth century. After the Bolshevik Revolution cut the American diocese off from a Moscow Patriarchate now under Soviet pressure, the American Church declared temporary self-government and, by the 1930s, stood in a formal canonical breach with Moscow. From 1933 to 1970 the “Metropolia” — the popular name for the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church of America — was effectively in schism from the Moscow Patriarchate, which it regarded as compromised by the atheist state (J. H. Erickson, Orthodox Christians in America, New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, ch. 5; OCA, “Road to Autocephaly, 1963–1970,” oca.org/history-archives).

By the 1960s a generation of theologians at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary — above all Fr. Alexander Schmemann and Fr. John Meyendorff — had reframed the American situation theologically. They argued that Orthodoxy in America was no longer an émigré outpost but a maturing local Church whose canonical destiny was a single, territorially-defined, self-governing body. This conviction made autocephaly, not merely autonomy, the goal (A. Schmemann, in C. Tarasar, ed., Orthodox America 1794–1976, Syosset: OCA Department of History and Archives, 1975, the first-person account of the events).

The Negotiations (1963–1970)

A thaw began in March 1963, when Metropolitan Nikodim (Rotov) of Leningrad — the Moscow Patriarchate’s chief of external relations and the principal Soviet-era architect of the rapprochement — made an unexpected visit to St. Vladimir’s Seminary; Metropolitan Leonty instructed Schmemann to “receive them with love.” The possibility of autocephaly was first raised informally in August 1968 at the World Council of Churches assembly in Uppsala, Sweden (OCA, “Road to Autocephaly”; A. Garklavs, “Reflections on Autocephaly,” Diocese of the Midwest, domoca.org).

Formal negotiations followed a rapid sequence:

• January 21, 1969 (New York) — a first official meeting to set the agenda.
• February 3, 1969 (Syosset) — a four-point framework: termination of the existing jurisdictional anomaly, the granting of autocephaly, transfer of properties (with St. Nicholas Cathedral in New York City reserved to Moscow), and the securing of recognition.
• August 24–25, 1969 (Geneva) — Schmemann drafted a set of canonical presuppositions, arguing that “the growth of the Church in America into a native Church warrants its proclamation as an Autocephalous Church.”
• November 26–27, 1969 (Tokyo) — the status of the Orthodox Church in Japan and of the Moscow patriarchal parishes was resolved.
• March 31, 1970 (Syosset) — the agreement was signed at the residence of Metropolitan Ireney (Bekish), reportedly “just before midnight” so as not to bear an April 1 date. The Metropolia’s negotiating committee was chaired by Archbishop Kiprian (Borisevich) of Philadelphia and included Schmemann, Meyendorff, and Fr. John Skvir (OCA, “Road to Autocephaly”).

The Tomos and the Death of Patriarch Alexis I

The Tomos of Autocephaly itself bears the date April 10, 1970, and was signed by Patriarch Alexis I (Simansky) of Moscow together with the members of the Holy Synod (reported as fourteen bishops). It grants the former “Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church in America” full independence “with the right of electing her own Primate and all her bishops, without confirmation or the right of veto,” and “exclusive spiritual and canonical jurisdiction over all bishops, clerics and laymen of the Eastern Orthodox confession in continental North America, excluding Mexico, and including the State of Hawaii” (Tomos of Autocephaly, full text, oca.org/history-archives/tomos-of-autocephaly).

That Patriarch Alexis — among the last Russian bishops consecrated before the Revolution — set his hand to the document in the final days of his life is consistently remembered as providentially fitting. He died at age 92 in mid-April 1970, only days later. The exact reckoning is reported inconsistently in the sources: [Disputed: the Tomos and most narrative accounts give the document’s date as April 10, 1970 (oca.org, “Tomos of Autocephaly”; Wikipedia, “Patriarch Alexy I of Moscow,” giving his death as April 17, 1970); the OCA’s own “Account of the Reception of the Tomos” states that he “signed the official Tomos four days before he died on Lazarus Saturday, April 18, 1970,” which would place the signing nearer April 14. Lazarus Saturday in 1970 did fall on April 18, Orthodox Pascha being April 26 (OCA Paschal cycle data). The likeliest reconciliation is that April 10 is the date of the synodal act and engrossed document, while the patriarch’s repose followed roughly a week later.] The formally sealed Tomos, signed by all the Russian bishops, was presented to the American delegation in Moscow on May 18, 1970, when Bishop Theodosius (Lazor) received the proclamation at the Patriarchal residence (OCA, “Account of the Reception of the Tomos,” oca.org/history-archives).

Conditions of the Grant

The autocephaly came with explicit limitations that remain canonically significant:

1. Japan. The Orthodox Church in Japan, which had also been a Russian missionary daughter, was granted autonomy under the Moscow Patriarchate rather than being folded into the new American Church — settled in the November 1969 Tokyo talks (OCA, “Road to Autocephaly”).
2. The patriarchal (exarchate) parishes. Parishes that wished to remain directly under Moscow were permitted to do so, retaining their status. The Tomos names St. Nicholas Cathedral in New York City and a list of more than forty additional parishes that “desired to remain in the canonical jurisdiction of the Most Holy Patriarch.” These continued as the Patriarchal Parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church in the USA (Tomos text, oca.org).
3. Territorial limits. Mexico was excluded; Hawaii was included. The grant thus did not even claim the whole of North America, leaving a structural tension with the autocephalous ideal it proclaimed.

A Saint for a New Church: The Glorification of St. Herman (1970)

The same year carried a synchrony that the OCA has always read as theologically of a piece with the autocephaly. On August 9, 1970, at Holy Resurrection Cathedral on Kodiak Island, Alaska, Metropolitan Ireney, with Archbishop Paul (Olmari) of Finland and other hierarchs, presided over the glorification of St. Herman of Alaska (†1837) — the first saint of North America to be canonized by the Orthodox Church. The Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR), despite its rejection of the autocephaly, offered its own simultaneous glorification of St. Herman in San Francisco (on July 27 Old Style) (OCA, “Days of Light and Joy: On the Canonization of St. Herman,” reflections of A. Schmemann, oca.org; cf. “Herman of Alaska,” used as locator). The conjunction — a native saint glorified in the year a native Church was born — became central to the OCA’s self-understanding as the local Church of the American land.

Constantinople’s Rejection and the Recognition Dispute

The Ecumenical Patriarchate rejected the grant. In a letter of June 24, 1970, Patriarch Athenagoras protested that Moscow had exceeded its authority, that “the granting of autocephaly is a right belonging to the Church as a whole, and cannot at all be considered a right of each Autocephalous Church,” and that the decision properly belonged to “a Synod representing more generally the entirety of the local Autocephalous Churches, and especially to an Ecumenical Synod.” He further charged Moscow with acting outside its jurisdiction, “usurping an authority not belonging to her, which is an act condemned by the holy canons” (Athenagoras to the OCA, June 24, 1970, text at orthodoxhistory.org, used here as a locator for the primary document).

The result is a recognition split that endures. As of 2026, the churches that recognize the OCA’s autocephaly are the Churches of Russia (the grantor), Bulgaria, Georgia, Poland, and the Czech Lands and Slovakia. The churches that do not recognize it include the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, and the Churches of Alexandria, Greece, and Cyprus; the Churches of Antioch, Jerusalem, Serbia, Romania, and Albania are generally described as neither formally recognizing the autocephalous title nor opposing the OCA’s canonicity. Crucially, even most non-recognizing churches treat the OCA as a fully canonical body and concelebrate with its clergy; the dispute is over the status of autocephaly, not over communion (OrthodoxWiki, “Responses to OCA autocephaly,” used as locator; Erickson, Orthodox Christians in America, ch. 5). This live state of affairs is given here as of June 2026, the Moscow–Constantinople rupture over Ukraine having further hardened the underlying positions without altering the OCA’s recognition list.

ROCOR’s reaction was the sharpest of all. It held that the Moscow Patriarchate, having submitted to the atheist regime, had forfeited its canonical voice, so that none of its acts — the autocephaly included — possessed legal force; and that it was contrary to canonical order for a body that had been in schism from Moscow (1933–1970) to be raised, by that same Moscow, directly to autocephaly. ROCOR remained out of communion with the OCA for decades (OrthodoxWiki, “ROCOR and OCA,” locator; see cross-link below).

The Theological Argument and the Ukraine Parallel

Beneath the jurisdictional quarrel lies a genuine ecclesiological dispute, unresolved to this day: how is autocephaly rightly granted? The Moscow–OCA position holds that a mother Church may grant autocephaly to a mature daughter on its own authority, a competence later regularized by pan-Orthodox consensus. The Constantinopolitan position holds that autocephaly, because it touches the whole Church, requires a pan-Orthodox or conciliar act, with the Ecumenical Throne exercising a coordinating prerogative. The 1971 St. Vladimir’s symposium issue of St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly gathered the early scholarly defense of the OCA grant (SVTQ 15:1–2, 1971, the “Autocephaly” symposium).

This is precisely the fault line that reopened in 2018, when the Ecumenical Patriarchate granted autocephaly to a new Orthodox Church of Ukraine and Moscow refused to recognize it — the mirror image, in many respects, of the 1970 dispute, with the roles of grantor and objector reversed. The parallel is noted here only briefly; it is treated at length in the post-Soviet history of the Russian tradition (see cross-links). As of 2026, neither the 1970 nor the 2018 recognition question has reached a pan-Orthodox resolution.

See Also

• Ligonier 1994 — the later, pan-jurisdictional attempt at American Orthodox unity
• Twentieth-Century Fragmentation — how the multiple jurisdictions arose
• The Orthodox Church in America — the jurisdiction created by the Tomos
• The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese — Constantinople’s American presence and its objection to the grant
• Overlapping Jurisdictions — the canonical anomaly the autocephaly aimed to resolve
• ROCOR–OCA Relations — ROCOR’s rejection of the 1970 autocephaly and later reconciliation
• Post-Soviet Revival — the Moscow Patriarchate after the USSR and the 2018 Ukraine parallel

References

• Tomos of Autocephaly (full text). Orthodox Church in America, History and Archives. oca.org/history-archives/tomos-of-autocephaly.
• “Road to Autocephaly, 1963–1970.” Orthodox Church in America, History and Archives. oca.org/history-archives/road-to-autocephaly-1963-1970.
• “Account of the Reception of the Tomos.” Orthodox Church in America, History and Archives. oca.org/history-archives/account-reception-tomos.
• Schmemann, Alexander. “Days of Light and Joy: On the Canonization of St. Herman, August 7–10, 1970.” Orthodox Church in America, Reflections.
• Tarasar, Constance J., ed. Orthodox America 1794–1976: Development of the Orthodox Church in America. Syosset, NY: Department of History and Archives, Orthodox Church in America, 1975. (Includes Schmemann’s first-person account of the autocephaly.)
• Erickson, John H. Orthodox Christians in America: A Short History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
• FitzGerald, Thomas E. The Orthodox Church (Denominations in America). Westport, CT: Greenwood / Praeger, 1995.
• Stokoe, Mark, and Leonid Kishkovsky. Orthodox Christians in North America, 1794–1994. Orthodox Christian Publications Center, 1995. (Also at oca.org/history-archives.)
• St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 15, nos. 1–2 (1971): symposium on autocephaly.
• Patriarch Athenagoras to the Orthodox Church in America, June 24, 1970. (Primary document located via orthodoxhistory.org, “1970 Letter from Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras on Autocephaly.”)
• “Responses to OCA autocephaly” and “ROCOR and OCA.” OrthodoxWiki. (Used to locate primary documents and recognition status; not as terminal citation.)