800 Metropolia Delegates in Rome
From 7 to 10 October 2026 we took part in the biennial Congress of our Metropolia. This year the Congress took place in Rome, though only 800 of the 3,000 clerical and lay delegates could attend. Previous Congresses took place in Rome in 2012, Lisbon in 2014, Rome in 2016, Paris in 2018, (covid restrictions forbade the Congress in 2020), Madrid in 2022 and Dublin in 2024. In 2028 the Congress will be taking place in England and there are hopes to hold an even bigger Congress. This will be in venues with large hotels with at least 250 rooms, meeting halls and restaurants, catering for between 1,000 and 3,000.
All eight bishops of our Metropolia participated in the Congress and the theme was Faith, Communion and Mission, with a strong emphasis on family life. Metropolitan Joseph told us of the foundation of the Metropolia by the Patriarchate of Romania in 2001. At that time there were only seven parishes in Italy (today there are over 400) and how he used to stay at parishioners’ homes, as he could not afford a hotel and scarcely had enough money for petrol. Today the Italian Diocese is about to obtain official recognition from the Italian government,
The participants were mainly aged between 20 and 45, with only a few older. I was the third oldest present and I am considerably older than any of the bishops. On the evening of Thursday 8, the priests organised a football tournament between Spain, Italy and England (France were not able to organise a team), refereed by Archdeacon Paul. England won and Archbishop Atanasie declared England the champions! The Congress was notable for the presence of many women (sometimes priests’ wives), babies and small children.
Married clergy all have short hair and trimmed beards, as they are expected to have. Only monastics have long hair and beards. This is quite unlike the anti-woman attitudes at Russian Church Conferences and Councils, many of which I have attended since 1981, with their rigid, parade-ground, even militaristic spirit. There everyone has to stand to attention in full dress uniform and nobody is allowed to express themselves freely because of ‘protocols’. Otherwise, they will be shouted at and intimidated, as they are supposed to be monks and to dress as monks. Those who do not pretend to be monks are treated as second-class citizens.
On Friday 9, an episcopal liturgy was celebrated in Romanian, Slavonic, English, Italian, French, German and Spanish. Bishop Nectary of Dublin presided. This tied in with the presentation to all the bishops of our multilingual booklet, also in seven languages, of the Akathist to All the Saints of the Western Lands and copies of the Icon ‘Saints of the Western Lands’. The original Icon, which is unique, is venerated in Colchester, as a result of our association with St John, who as Archbishop of Western Europe revived the veneration of these saints in the 1950s.
Some Statistics: Towards ROME – the Romanian Orthodox Metropolia in Europe
There are about 5,000,000 Romanians (including some 1,000,000 children born in Western Europe) and 1,000,000 Moldovans and their locally-born children, all with Romanian passports in Western Europe. Romanian Orthodox far outnumber the Orthodox of other nationalities in our countries. In the UK there are 1,500,000 Romanian nationals according to official statistics and Romanian has overtaken Polish as the second language in the UK.
The wave of emigration has now stabilised, though Romanians are still coming to the UK from Germany, Italy, France and Spain, where the economies are in recession because, ironically, of anti-Russian sanctions. These have rebounded on Western countries which enforced them, thus they shot themselves in the foot. In other words, over 80% of all Orthodox in the UK belong to the Romanian Archdiocese and the proportion is similar in other Western European countries.
Romanian Orthodox are divided into two Autonomous Metropolias, one for Central and Northern Europe (three bishops and some 220 parishes for Germany, Luxembourg, Austria and Scandinavia), the other for Western and Southern Europe (eight bishops and over 1,060 parishes and 24 monasteries for Portugal, Spain, Andorra, Italy, San Marino, Malta, France, Monaco, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Belgium, the Netherlands, the UK, Ireland and Iceland). It is clear that eight Archdioceses are beginning to take shape, two for the German lands (Germany and Switzerland-Austria), one for Scandinavia, one for the UK and Ireland, one for Italy, one for France, one for Iberia and one for Benelux.
Conversations with Romanians living outside Romania were interesting. As we know, Romanians help to staff the UK Antiochian and Greek dioceses, which are very short of clergy. Indeed, the Greek Archbishop Nikitas in London has publicly said that he is very grateful to Romanians who fill some of his emptying and elderly parishes. In the same way, Romanian-speaking Moldovans make up the vast bulk of the clergy and people who are under Moscow in the Diaspora.
However, the same thing is also happening in Greece and Cyprus. Thus, a Romanian lady who has lived in Cyprus for 20 years told me at the Congress how there are now no fewer than 17 Romanian priests in the Diocese of Metropolitan Athanasios of Limassol. A few years back Metr Athanasios was chosen by the Cypriot people to be the Archbishop of Cyprus, but the US Embassy intervened to stop him and appointed their pro-schismatic Ukrainian candidate instead. As a result, there is more or less a schism in the Church of Cyprus between the Orthodox and the pro-Constantinople CIA appointees.