The Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia — formed by exile after 1917, reunited with the Church in Russia in 2007. The Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, usually shortened to ROCOR or “the Church Abroad,” is a self-governing part of the Russian Orthodox Church with parishes and monasteries across the United States and around the world. It traces its roots to the Orthodox Christians who fled Russia after the 1917 revolution, carried the worship of the old Russian Church into exile, and, after nearly a century apart from Moscow, restored full communion with it in 2007.
Below is how that happened, what ROCOR understands its purpose to be, and how it is organized today.
I. Origin
ROCOR exists because, in the years after 1917, a large part of the Russian Church found itself outside Russia and unable, in conscience, to be governed from inside it.
1917–1920 — Exile
After the Bolshevik revolution and the civil war that followed, well over a million Russians left the country, among them dozens of bishops and thousands of priests, monks, and nuns. Many gathered first in Constantinople, then in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, where the Serbian Orthodox Church gave them shelter.
1921 — The Karlovci Synod
Meeting at Sremski Karlovci in Serbia, the émigré bishops organized a temporary church administration under Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky), the senior Russian hierarch abroad. It was meant to hold the Church together for Russians in exile until normal contact with Moscow was possible again — a “temporary” arrangement that would last for decades.
1927 — A break over Sergius’s declaration
Inside the Soviet Union, Metropolitan Sergius, acting head of the persecuted Church, issued a declaration of the Church’s loyalty to the Soviet state, hoping to secure its legal survival. Many bishops abroad, watching clergy imprisoned and churches closed by the thousands, concluded they could not be freely governed under those terms, and the émigré Synod continued on its own — holding that it was the free continuation of the Russian Church until the persecution passed.
1945–1950s — A second wave, and a new center in America
World War II scattered the emigration again, and a new wave of refugees, including many who passed through Germany’s displaced-persons camps, eventually settled in the United States. Holy Trinity Monastery, founded in 1930 in Jordanville, New York, grew into the Church’s spiritual and publishing center in America, and the Synod of Bishops eventually made its seat in New York City.
1981 — Canonizing the New Martyrs
ROCOR formally glorified the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia — the bishops, priests, monastics, and laypeople killed for their faith under Soviet rule, including Tsar Nicholas II and his family — nearly two decades before the Church in Russia did the same. For ROCOR, this act of remembrance sat close to the center of why the Church Abroad existed at all.
2007 — Reunion
As the Soviet Union fell and the Church inside Russia gradually regained its freedom, decades of dialogue led to the Act of Canonical Communion, signed in Moscow on May 17, 2007, by Patriarch Alexy II and ROCOR’s First Hierarch, Metropolitan Laurus. It restored full communion between the two churches while leaving ROCOR to govern its own affairs.
II. Mission
ROCOR describes its purpose less as building something new than as keeping something whole — carrying forward the worship, discipline, and spiritual life of the pre-revolutionary Russian Church without interruption, for as long as that continuity mattered.
Preserving the tradition
Church Slavonic services, the older church calendar, and the forms of worship and monastic life carried out of Russia in the 1920s continue largely unchanged in ROCOR parishes — treated less as heritage to be curated than as a living inheritance to be handed on.
Bearing witness to the New Martyrs
The memory of those the Soviet state killed or imprisoned for their faith runs through ROCOR’s sense of itself — a reminder, told and retold, of what the Church in Russia endured and what it cost to keep it alive.
Opening beyond the emigration
What began as a church for Russian refugees has become something broader. Many ROCOR parishes today serve English-speaking converts alongside cradle Orthodox Christians of Russian, Ukrainian, and other backgrounds, with services often celebrated in a mix of Church Slavonic and English.
III. Identity
Since 2007, ROCOR has been a self-governing part of the Russian Orthodox Church, electing its own First Hierarch — currently Metropolitan Nicholas (Olhovsky), enthroned in 2022 — subject to confirmation by the Patriarch of Moscow and the Russian Holy Synod. Day to day, ROCOR runs its own affairs through its Synod of Bishops, seated at the Cathedral of Our Lady “of the Sign” in New York City, and organizes its close to 200 U.S. parishes and ten monasteries into dioceses such as Eastern America, Western America, and Chicago & Mid-America, with further communities across Europe, Australia, and South America.
Within American Orthodoxy, ROCOR is generally counted among the more traditionalist jurisdictions — holding to the older calendar and older forms of worship that a number of other Orthodox churches in the U.S. have since revised — even as its congregations have grown steadily less defined by any single ethnic background with each passing decade.
Founded — 1920–21, at Sremski Karlovci, Serbia
Reunited with Moscow — May 17, 2007
Headquarters — Synodal Cathedral, New York City
First Hierarch — Metropolitan Nicholas (Olhovsky), since 2022
Calendar — Julian (“Old”) calendar
Worship — Byzantine rite, in Church Slavonic and English
U.S. presence — About 200 parishes and 10 monasteries, in several dioceses’
