On February 16, at the meeting in the ancient monastery “St. George” in Cairo the H. Synod of the Patriarchate of Alexandria decided to depose Bishop Constantine (Ostrovsky) of Zaraysk from the Russian Orthodox Church.
On October 11 last year, he was appointed acting “Patriarchal Exarch of Africa” in place of Metropolitan Leonid (Gorbachev).
The latter was deprived of his episcopal rank on November 22, 2022 by a decision of the Synod of Alexandria for similar canonical violations: entering the canonical jurisdiction of the Alexandrian Patriarchate, distributing holy ointment, seducing the local clergy and inciting them to schism, as well as promoting ethnophyleticism.
Prior to this, the Alexandrian Patriarch Theodore II repeatedly appealed to the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, with a request to abolish the Russian “exarchate” in Africa.
The official ruling states:
“The Holy Synod proceeded to depose the acting “Patriarchal Plenipotentiary in Africa”, former Bishop Constantine of Zaraysk, from the high rank of bishop, who, after settling arbitrarily in Cairo, Egypt, within the seat of the Holy Archdiocese of Alexandria, committed a number of canonical violations : encroaching on the jurisdiction of the ancient cathedral, handing out antiminses, buying with money local clergy and even excommunicated ones, creating factions, ethnophiletic divisions, etc., while (the synod) again condemned the new ecclesiastical-political “theories” for the pastoral care of the “Russian World” around the world on the basis of nationality”.
