Metropolitan Districts and Metropolises in the Recent History of the Russian Orthodox Church

Abstract

The Church areas created in the Russian Orthodox Church in 1928 and 1934 did not exist long, and therefore did not have a noticeable impact on Church life. However, the idea of creating Church areas which united several dioceses was not forgotten. With the appearance of favorable conditions, nowadays this idea received a new development in the project of creating metropolitan areas and metropolias. The purpose of this article is to compare the status and powers of the governing bodies of metropolitan areas and metropolias, including the experience of creating regional Church centers a century ago. To achieve this goal, the method of comparative historical and сhurch-legal analysis was used. The territorial canonical structures created by experts and the Church legislator in the form of metropolitan areas and metropolias by uni cation of several dioceses have become a unique experience in designing regional Church centers. Having gone beyond the limits of pastoral and missionary tasks, which was a constant of all previous experience in building metropolitan areas administrations, modern metropolitan areas are endowed with administrative and judicial powers, and metropolias with administrative powers. In this work we are going to consider how this manifested itself in the details of the construction of regional Church centers.