Russian Orthodox Diocese of Lithuania

Monastery of the Holy Spirit

The Russian Orthodox Diocese of Vilnius and Lithuania is a diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church whose territory comprises the country of Lithuania. Its metropolitan is appointed by the Holy Synod of the Moscow Patriarchate. Its headquarters is at the Holy Spirit Monastery in Vilnius, though nominally its cathedral is the Dormition Cathedral in Vilnius. Its current head is Metropolitan Innokenty (Vasiliev).

The diocese includes five deaneries, based in municipal Vilnius, regional Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipėda, and Visaginas, with about sixty parishes and two monasteries. The majority of parishioners come from the resident Slavic minorities.

History

Orthodox Christianity first entered Lithuania in significant numbers in the thirteenth century with the conversion of some of its early nobles from paganism. Among these were the Three Martyrs of Vilnius, Anthony, John, and Eustathius, martyred in 1347 under the Grand Duke Algirdas.

Formally established Orthodox parishes in Lithuania and in the surrounding region ultimately derive from the short-lived fourteenth-century Metropolis of Lithuania and its successor jurisdictions (based largely in Kyiv), which had been under the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. Orthodox Christianity was effectively erased from Lithuania as a result of the Union of Brest in the seventeenth century, when Lithuania was part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. At that time, all the Orthodox parishes in Lithuania left the Orthodox Church and joined the Catholic Church.

In the late eighteenth century, with the Partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Lithuania became part of the Russian Empire. The modern Russian Orthodox diocese was founded in 1839 with the incorporation of the Uniate parishes under Metropolitan Joseph Semashko into the Russian church at the Synod of Polotsk. Among the more notable hierarchs of Lithuania in this period was St. Tikhon (Bellavin), who served in the post 1913-1917.

The diocese functioned within the Russian empire until Lithuania became independent in 1918. At that time, a number of the churches that had been taken from the Catholic Church were returned, and certain Orthodox churches, such as Archangel Michael Church in Kaunas, were also given to the Catholic Church. Most of the Orthodox parishes that exist today in Lithuania were built during the imperial period.

See also

• Christianity in Lithuania

External links

• Official website
• Entry on Moscow Patriarchate website