The Canonical Autonomy of the Orthodox Church of Finland: History and the Document of the Council of Crete

Dr. Jelisei Heikkilä

The Canonical Autonomy of the Orthodox Church of Finland: History and the Document of the Council of Crete

Chantilly, October 6th 2026

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Your All-Holiness,

Your Beatitude,

Your Eminences,

Graces,

Excellencies,

Dear Fathers and participants of the conference,

First of all, I would like to thank His Eminence Elder Metropolitan Emmanuel of Chalcedon and the Organising Committee for inviting me to this conference.

Since 1923 the autonomy of the Orthodox Church of Finland within the Ecumenical Patriarchate has had, according to its Tomos, both a vertical and a horizontal dimension.  The vertical relationship asks through whom the Church is catholic; the horizontal, with whom. Vertically, autonomy binds the Church to its Mother Church; horizontally – above all in its early history – to the neighbouring autonomous Churches of Estonia and later Latvia. 

The Holy and Great Council’s document regarding the autonomy regulates in detail the relationship of an autonomous Church to its autocephalous Church, but knows the horizontal relationship, for example, the relationship between the neighbouring autonomous churches, a bit less[1]. Ten years after Crete, I would like to consider, from the perspective of the local Church in Finland, how these two dimensions relate to each other.

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The Church of Finland has known two phases of autonomy: one granted by Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow in 1921, the other by Patriarch Meletios IV of Constantinople in 1923. Right after the independence of the country, the Church Assembly in Finland set in 1919 autocephaly as its goal for a common regional Church of Finland, East Karelia and Estonia, with broad autonomy as an interim aim[2]. This was negotiated in Tallinn, Estonia, in the same year[3]. Since contact with Moscow had been severed after the Soviet regime came to power, Finland’s petition for autonomy was forwarded through the Synod of the Estonian Church. Patriarch Tikhon then declared the Church autonomous in 1921 (on 29 January / 11 February)[4].

As an autonomous Church under Moscow, the Church of Finland also consecrated its own holy chrism, since it could no longer be obtained from Russia. In 1922, the Russian Church authorised Archbishop of Finland Seraphim to consecrate holy chrism, which was distributed from Finland to the Baltic states and as far as Western Europe[5].

Already in 1920, the Patriarchate of Constantinople had issued a statement, dated 18 April, declaring that deviation from the holy canons in force would be permissible in exceptional circumstances. This statement was an answer to a letter sent by the Finnish government in January 1920 through the Greek embassy in Stockholm, which outlined a plan for a common autocephalous Church and asked the Church of Greece for help in consecrating an auxiliary bishop. The Church of Greece referred the matter to Constantinople[6].

The statement became relevant only in 1922 when a memorandum submitted to the Ministry of Education appealed to the Church’s own history: the Karelian parishes – the memorandum says – like those of Novgorod, had once belonged to the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and in the early seventeenth century the Ecumenical Patriarch, at the appeal of the Swedish government, had consecrated a monk named Grigory as bishop for the Orthodox left on the Swedish side by the Peace of Stolbovo[7].

In July 1923 a Finnish-Estonian delegation arrived in Constantinople. A common Church for Finland and the Baltic region was no longer raised[8]. Patriarch Meletios rejected autocephaly, since in his view it was “impossible that every group of Orthodox Christians living in an independent state could demand autocephaly”. Otherwise “the Churches of Latvia and Lithuania” would also have to be recognised as such – Lithuania had only “some twenty thousand Orthodox Christians” – and “the Orthodox communities arising in Norway, Sweden and Denmark would strive for the same”. Only a Church with “a full number of bishops, and above all one whose faith is professed by the majority of the population”, could be autocephalous[9].

The Patriarch’s personal secretary (πρωτονοτάριος) offered instead a model of autonomy including confirmation of the archbishop’s election, the bishops’ right of appeal, the reception of chrism from Constantinople, and the primate’s duty to commemorate the Patriarch in the liturgy[10]. 

As a historical curiosity, at Meletios’s own wish, it was added that Russian patriarch Tikhon be commemorated after the Ecumenical Patriarch during his lifetime[11]. The Holy and Sacred Synod approved the autonomy on July 6, 1923, and on the same journey, the Estonian-born Herman Aav was consecrated (on July 8) as Bishop of Karelia for Finland[12].

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According to the Tomos, the Ecumenical Patriarchate received the Church of Finland into its care, “taking in this matter the place of the Most Holy Church of Russia, which under present conditions is unable to care for it”. At the same time it blessed the autonomy “already granted by the Most Blessed Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow and All Russia”[13].

Some scholars build their narrative on the claim that the new autonomy lacked Moscow’s consent[14]. Historically this was probably true, but canonically it is secondary: the key verb of the Tomos is “to bless”, which stresses continuity[15].

Two of the Tomos’s seven articles are central here. Article 3 entitles the archbishop, “with the knowledge of the Ecumenical Patriarch”, to invite “bishops from Estonia or from other metropolises within the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Throne in order to form a full synod”. Such a synod is accountable for its decisions to the Patriarch and his Synod[16]. Equally, the Estonian Tomos grants a corresponding right to invite Finnish bishops[17].

Article 7 sets the order of commemoration: priests and deacons commemorate their bishop, bishops the archbishop, and the archbishop the Ecumenical Patriarch, “through whom there is communion with the Orthodox who rightly understand the word of Christ’s truth and with the whole episcopate”[18]. The archbishop of an autonomous Church is thus joined to this episcopate commemorating the name of the primate of the Mother Church.

Soon Moscow started to demand Finland’s return, treating its relationship with Constantinople as temporary[19]. The claim was rejected, yet it was acknowledged that the wording of the Tomos itself, “taking someone’s place” may imply the idea of a locum tenens[20]. Meletios himself had given grounds for this, saying that when the autonomy was being granted in Phanar, the Ecumenical Throne “would be happy if it could say to the Russian Church, once order returns there, that I took care to preserve and develop the independence which you began”[21]. The dispute ended only in 1957, when the Moscow Patriarchate withdrew its claim[22].

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From the outset, the neighbourly relationship between the Finnish and Estonian Churches took canonical form. Because Finland had long had only one bishop, its first charter (1925) decreed that the leadership of the Church in Estonia was to appoint a bishop to the Finnish Synod of Bishops[23]. The synod met five times (between 1926 and 1934), twice in Estonia[24].

Two features are canonically noteworthy: the synod of an autonomous Church met on the territory of another local Church, and it was chaired by Metropolitan Alexander of Estonia, although it was convened by Archbishop Herman of Finland[25]. In the theology of synodality, the one who convenes and the one who presides should be the same person[26]. In church history, too, the metropolitan convened the provincial synod, presided over it and implemented its decisions, and the synod was not “complete” without him, as Professor Vlasios Feidas notes in his study on autocephaly and autonomy[27].

The same co-operation was expressed in episcopal consecrations, which neither Church could perform alone. After the Latvian Church came under the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 1936, the Archbishop of Finland also took part in the consecrations of Latvian bishops[28].

It is also noteworthy that in 1937 the first joint synod of bishops of the Finnish, Estonian and Latvian Churches, meeting in Finland, agreed that their primates would commemorate the sister Churches’ heads after the Ecumenical Patriarch[29]. They also agreed to exchange annual reports and invitations to meetings and consecrations[30]. 

The surviving sources do not establish whether the Patriarchate was informed of this decision[31]. In 1938, the Churches set up a joint secretariat within the Estonian Church to manage relations with ecumenical organisations and other Orthodox Churches[32].

*

Now, coming back to the Tomos which names its basis in its first sentence: “To the Most Holy Apostolic and Patriarchal Ecumenical Throne of Constantinople has been canonically entrusted the care of the Holy Orthodox Churches deprived of pastoral care by present circumstances.”[33] During the negotiations in Phanar for the autonomy patriarch Meletios justified this duty by two titles: the see is “first among the patriarchal sees and also the see of the Mother Church”[34]. Yet the same address also acknowledged: “If a canonical ecclesiastical government and Patriarch Tikhon were functioning in Russia, we could tell you nothing but that you must turn to them, for they constitute your canonical authority.”[35]

According to professor Feidas, the recognition of autocephaly, and even of autonomy, requires the consent of the see from whose territory the Church is detached[36]. By this measure, however, one might conclude that the canonical arrangement in Finland became complete only in 1957, when Moscow withdrew its claim.

Here, for Feidas, an ecumenical council or the unanimous agreement of all the patriarchal sees is the canonical organ that proclaims a Church autocephalous or autonomous, and the criteria for autocephaly apply analogously to autonomy. The see, exercising jurisdiction, has, in principle, the proposing voice (εἰσηγητικὴ γνώμη), which the heads of the other Churches accept or reject unanimously[37].

He also regards as a precondition of autocephaly precisely what Finland lacked in 1923: internal independence (ἐσωτερικὴ αὐτάρκεια) in consecrating and judging its bishops[38]. Meletios’s demand for “a full number of bishops” applied the same criterion. Professor Konstantinos Pitsakis explains the interwar autonomies, Finland’s included, in the same way: they were granted to Churches which, owing to their small membership, minority status or ecclesiastical development, could not yet function as autocephalous[39].

And now, coming to the Crete document. The document codifies a vertical model, according to which granting autonomy is the canonical prerogative of the autocephalous Church within its own territory, and subordinates the horizontal relationship to it: the autonomous Church conducts its inter-Orthodox, inter-Christian and inter-religious relations through the Mother Church[40]. The Mother Church’s mediating role was already known in 1929: at the pan-Orthodox meeting then in preparation, autonomous Churches would have been represented “in the group of the autocephalous Church under whose ecclesiastical authority they stand” – Finland and Estonia, that is, in the group of Ecumenical Patriarchate[41]. And the same thing happened with the Council of Crete itself: the Archbishop of Finland and the Metropolitan of Estonia were part of the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s group.

According to the document (1d), in some forms of autonomy, dependence is also expressed by the autonomous primate’s participation in the synod of the autocephalous Church. In a related way, a voice in electing the patriarch, though not as a member of its synod, occurred in 1929 and 1936, when, at the Holy and Sacred Synod’s request, the Finnish archbishop sent a proxy authorisation for the patriarchal election[42].

The document also recognises varying degrees of dependence and corresponding forms of autonomy (sections 1a and 1c). Baltic history illustrates this diversity. Under Latvia’s autonomy, Holy and Sacred Synod elected the metropolitan from three candidates, while Finland and Estonia elected their own primates, and the Patriarchate confirmed the election through the subsequent canonical procedure.[43]

In terms of the horizontal relationship, the scope of section 2d of the document – relations through the autocephalous church – depends on whether the mutual relations between autonomous sister churches constitute the inter-Orthodox relations it refers to. Finland, Estonia and, from 1936 Latvia all belonged to the same jurisdiction. Their mutual relations were therefore internal to that jurisdiction. By contrast, the external relations handled by their joint secretariat in 1938 would, under the Crete document, fall now to the Mother Church.

The document addresses the first see’s role in three provisions. The Ecumenical Patriarchate is informed of every new autonomy (2c). Autonomy in the diaspora requires pan-Orthodox consensus. Where two autocephalous Churches grant autonomy in the same territory, the parties appeal to the Ecumenical Patriarch for a canonical solution.[44] The Council’s diaspora document, when listing the regions in which Episcopal Assemblies will be created, expressly excludes Finland from Scandinavia. Finland, a Nordic country, not a Scandinavian one in the strict sense, is a local Church in its own territory, not part of the diaspora.[45]

However, the provision on overlapping autonomies is not theoretical. Metropolitan Grigorios (Papathomas) of Peristeri speaks plainly of the Baltic problem: the absorption of one Church by another, as when the Moscow Patriarchate absorbed the Latvian Church in 1945 – an offence the canons nowhere foresee, “precisely because it was unthinkable to them”. The canons warn only against the “confusion of the Churches”.[46] When the Ecumenical Patriarchate reactivated the Estonian Tomos of 1923 in 1996, two parallel jurisdictions, of Constantinople and of Moscow, emerged in the same territory, and the horizontal bond took a new form: Archbishop John of Finland, mandated by the Mother Church, temporarily administered the Estonian Church.[47]

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Bringing my thoughts to a conclusion, I hope that even this cursory review would serve as a reminder that autonomy is not merely an administrative halfway house, but a question of how a local Church is catholic. The Crete document clearly answers the question: through whom. The Finnish experience answers also: with whom. Thank you for your attention!

1. Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church, “Autonomy and the Means by Which it is Proclaimed”, Crete 2016, https://www.holycouncil.org/autonomy (accessed 28 September 2026).

2. U. V. J. Setälä, “Tomoksen vaiheilta” [On the history of the Tomos], Ortodoksia 14 (1963): 49; Aamun Koitto 21–22/1928 (20 Nov. 1928), 251–252. Unless otherwise indicated, translations from Finnish are my own.

3. Setälä, “Tomoksen vaiheilta”, 49.

4. Aamun Koitto 1/1922 (5 Jan. 1922), 5–6; Aamun Koitto 21–22/1928, 253; Setälä, “Tomoksen vaiheilta”, 53.

5. Letter of the Holy Synod of the Russian Church to Archbishop Seraphim, Aamun Koitto 2/1922 (20 Jan. 1922), 13–14; Aamun Koitto 7/1922 (5 Apr. 1922), 56: at the Patriarch’s request the preparation of the chrism began in spring 1922 in Vyborg Cathedral, to be completed and solemnly consecrated on Holy Thursday, 13 April 1922.

6. Statement of the Chancery of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, 18 April 1920, Finnish translation in Setälä, “Tomoksen vaiheilta”, 56–58; on the Baltic question, 57; quotation, 58. It was signed for the committee by Metropolitan Germanos of Amaseia and the first secretary, Archimandrite Dionysios; ibid., 58. The Ecumenical Throne was vacant between the resignation of Germanos V in October 1918 and the election of Meletios IV in December 1921. On the background, see ibid., 49, 51–53: the letter was sent in the name of Foreign Minister Rudolf Holsti (no. 379, 7 Jan. 1920) and consisted of an account of the autocephaly plans and a proposal to consecrate the auxiliary bishop with the help of the Church of Greece.

7. Setälä, “Tomoksen vaiheilta”, 53–54, citing the memorandum of Solntsev and Repo to the Ministry of Education, 9 Sept. 1922; Aamun Koitto 21–22/1928, 258 and footnote.

8. The delegation comprised Professor E. N. Setälä for the government, Archpriest Sergei Solntsev, the Estonian-born episcopal candidate Herman Aav and Archbishop Alexander of Estonia: Aamun Koitto 14–15/1923 (27 July 1923), 109–112; U. V. J. Setälä, Kansallisen ortodoksisen kirkkokunnan perustamiskysymys Suomen politiikassa 1917–1925 [The question of founding a national Orthodox Church in Finnish politics, 1917–1925] (Helsinki, 1966), 142–144. Archbishop Herman later confirmed that union was not even discussed on the journey; ibid., 144 n. 1.

9. Aamun Koitto 23/1923 (5 Dec. 1923), 179.

10. Setälä, Kansallisen ortodoksisen kirkkokunnan perustamiskysymys, 148–149; cf. Aamun Koitto 23/1923, 179–180; Aamun Koitto 14–15/1923, 111.

11. Setälä, Kansallisen ortodoksisen kirkkokunnan perustamiskysymys, 150.

12. Among the consecrators was Alexander, who had received the rank of metropolitan from the Patriarch: Setälä, Kansallisen ortodoksisen kirkkokunnan perustamiskysymys, 151–153. According to Setälä’s report eight metropolitans took part, according to Solntsev nine; ibid., 153 n. 1. On Seraphim’s protests: Aamun Koitto 14–15/1923, 112.

13. Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, Tomos for the Orthodox Archdiocese of Finland, 6 July 1923, introduction, Finnish trans. Lauri Tudeer, Aamun Koitto 18/1923 (7 Sept. 1923), 138–139; the same translation: Orthodox Church of Finland, “Autonomia-tomos”, https://ort.fi/asiakirjat/autonomia-tomos/ (accessed 28 September 2026). On the translator, see Setälä, Kansallisen ortodoksisen kirkkokunnan perustamiskysymys, 159 n. 4. Quotations from the Tomos are translated from this Finnish version.

14. Daniela Kalkandjieva, “Ecclesiastical Geopolitics of Modern Orthodoxy: An Overview with a Special Focus on the Activities of the Patriarchates of Constantinople and Moscow throughout the 19th and 20th Centuries”, in The Pan-Orthodox Council of 2016 – A New Era for the Orthodox Church? Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. Vasilios N. Makrides and Sebastian Rimestad (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2021), 93.

15. Johan Bastubacka, “Mirroring the Majority? The Legal Understanding of Finnish Orthodoxy and the 1923 Tomos in the Light of the 1925 Government Decree”, Ortodoksia 63 (2023): 118.

16. Tomos 1923, art. 3.

17. Bastubacka, “Mirroring the Majority?”, 120 n. 83, citing Voitto Setälä, “Viron ortodoksisen kirkon tomos”, Historiallinen Aikakauskirja 2/1975, 132–133.

18. Tomos 1923, arts 5 and 7; cf. Setälä’s summary, Kansallisen ortodoksisen kirkkokunnan perustamiskysymys, 154–155. This last phrase echoes the anaphora of St John Chrysostom’s liturgy and its prayer for the whole Orthodox episcopate: “Μνήσθητι, Κύριε, πάσης ἐπισκοπῆς ὀρθοδόξων, τῶν ὀρθοτομούντων τὸν λόγον τῆς σῆς ἀληθείας.” The phrase derives from 2 Tim. 2:15 (ὀρθοτομοῦντα τὸν λόγον τῆς ἀληθείας). It is early liturgical stock (Formelgut), found already in the anaphoral intercessions of the Apostolic Constitutions (VIII, 12:40); in the Liturgy of Chrysostom it belongs to the intercession for the whole hierarchy: Robert F. Taft, A History of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, vol. IV, The Diptychs, Orientalia Christiana Analecta 238 (Roma: Pontificium Institutum Studiorum Orientalium, 1991), 135, 139. The deacon’s bidding for the bishop, “that he may rightly divide the word of truth”, is already known to John Chrysostom: John D. Zizioulas, Eucharist, Bishop, Church: The Unity of the Church in the Divine Eucharist and the Bishop During the First Three Centuries, trans. Elizabeth Theokritoff (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2001), 244 n. 137. According to Zizioulas, the commemoration of the bishop’s name at the supreme moment of the anaphora has remained an absolutely indispensable element of the presbyter’s liturgy, and it is the bishop of the place where the Eucharist is celebrated who must be commemorated; ibid., 222–223. Bishops’ names were entered in the diptychs and erased upon deposition; ibid., 244 n. 137. Canon 13 of the First-Second Council (861) orders the deposition of a presbyter or deacon who, before a synodal judgement, breaks communion with his bishop and does not mention his name “ἐν ταῖς ἱεραῖς τῶν λειτουργιῶν εὐχαῖς, κατὰ τὸ παραδεδομένον τῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ”: The Great Councils of the Orthodox Churches: Decisions and Synodika. From Constantinople 861 to Constantinople 1872, ed. Alberto Melloni, Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Generaliumque Decreta IV/1 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), 19. On the bishop as the one who rightly teaches the word of truth, see also Alexander Rentel, “The Relationship between Bishops, Synods, and the Metropolitan-Bishop in the Orthodox Canonical Tradition”, in Power and Authority in Eastern Christian Experience, ed. F. K. Soumakis, Sophia Studies in Orthodox Theology 3 (New York: Theotokos Press, 2011), 86–87.

19. Holy Synod to Archbishop Seraphim, no. 188, 28 Dec. 1923, published in Aamun Koitto 5/1924, 40; the letter conveyed decision no. 132 of 14 Nov. 1923 of the Moscow Patriarch’s Synod; Setälä, Kansallisen ortodoksisen kirkkokunnan perustamiskysymys, 178.

20. Setälä, Kansallisen ortodoksisen kirkkokunnan perustamiskysymys, 159; cf. Setälä, “Tomoksen vaiheilta”, 54–56.

21. Patriarch Meletios’s address to the delegation, 4 July 1923, Aamun Koitto 23/1923, 179; cf. Setälä, “Tomoksen vaiheilta”, 56.

22. Setälä, Kansallisen ortodoksisen kirkkokunnan perustamiskysymys, 158; Kalkandjieva, “Ecclesiastical Geopolitics”, 87.

23. Pekka Metso and Maria Takala-Roszczenko, “The Bonds of Kindred Churches: Finnish-Baltic Orthodox Connections in the Interwar Period”, in Baltic Orthodoxy: People, Places, Practices, ed. James M. White and Irina Paert (Tartu: University of Tartu Press, 2025), 372–373; Aamun Koitto 35/1934 (31 Aug. 1934), 207.

24. Metso and Takala-Roszczenko, “Bonds of Kindred Churches”, 373; Aamun Koitto 35/1934, 207. Setälä mentions four meetings (Sortavala 1926, Tallinn 1927, Helsinki 1929, Tallinn 1934), Kansallisen ortodoksisen kirkkokunnan perustamiskysymys, 173. According to Metso and Takala-Roszczenko’s archival sources, two meetings were held in 1926, and the 1927 meeting took place in Pärnu.

25. Metso and Takala-Roszczenko, “Bonds of Kindred Churches”, 373, 375.

26. Robert Turner, “Synodality and John Zizioulas”, Proche-Orient Chrétien 69 (2019): 49–50. In Zizioulas’s ecclesiology the synod is not a body above the local Churches but an extension of the structure of the eucharistic assembly: it consists of bishops precisely as heads of eucharistic assemblies, and “the one” and “the many” presuppose each other at every level of the Church: Maxim (Vasiljević), “The Orthodox Church is a Synodal Church: Towards a Synodical Ontology of the Church”, in Listening to the East: Synodality in Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Church Traditions, Collana Ut Unum Sint 4 (Città del Vaticano: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2023), 43–45, citing John D. Zizioulas, The One and the Many (Los Angeles: Sebastian Press, 2010), 258, 268. The synod is composed of bishops “precisely because of their capacity as heads of the eucharistic assemblies” (45), and there is no primacy that is not exercised synodally at the local, regional and universal levels (44).

27. Vlasios Feidas (Βλάσιος Ἰ. Φειδᾶς), Αὐτοκέφαλον καὶ Αὐτόνομον ἐν Ἐκκλησίᾳ (Jerusalem, 1979), 11: “Ὁ μητροπολίτης συνεκάλει τὴν ἐπαρχιακὴν σύνοδον, προήδρευε καὶ ἐξετέλει τὰς ἀποφάσεις αὐτῆς”; ibid., 12, citing canons 19 (“οὓς καὶ προσήκει δι᾽ ἐπιστολῆς τὸν ἐν τῇ μητροπόλει συγκαλεῖν”) and 16 (“τελείαν δὲ ἐκείνην εἶναι σύνοδον, ᾗ συμπάρεστι καὶ ὁ τῆς μητροπόλεως”) of Antioch. Similarly Rentel, “Relationship”, 88: the first bishop presides at synodal meetings and determines their place, time and agenda, and no synod can be held without him (Nicaea I 4 and 6; Antioch 16, 19 and 20; Chalcedon 19; Nicaea II 6).

28. Kalkandjieva, “Ecclesiastical Geopolitics”, 93; Aamun Koitto 39/1936 (25 Sept. 1936), 307; Aamun Koitto 40/1938 (7 Oct. 1938), 312–314. Aamun Koitto 41/1936 dates Latvia’s transfer to 1935. Metso and Takala-Roszczenko date the consecration of Bishop Aleksandrs Vitols of Jersika to 1937 (“Bonds of Kindred Churches”, 378), Aamun Koitto 40/1938 to 1938. There was material help too: from 1930 the Church of Finland supported the Estonian Church annually for the theological training of its clergy: Aamun Koitto 28/1937 (9 July 1937), 3–4.

29. Aamun Koitto 36/1937 (3 Sept. 1937), 272. The extract from the minutes survives in two copies (SOKHA F534/1937 Fa3; SOAKA F25/1933 Fa7), according to Metso and Takala-Roszczenko, “Bonds of Kindred Churches”, 380.

30. Aamun Koitto 36/1937, 272; Metso and Takala-Roszczenko, “Bonds of Kindred Churches”, 380.

31. Metso and Takala-Roszczenko, “Bonds of Kindred Churches”, 380–381, 385. Archbishop Herman stressed that the joint synod at Sortavala had no decision-making power but expressed common positions: ibid., 382. Herman’s interview, Aamun Koitto 36/1937, 273: “The resolutions do not as such become binding rules, but they serve to form a uniform position on many ecclesiastical questions.”

32. Metso and Takala-Roszczenko, “Bonds of Kindred Churches”, 383–384.

33. Tomos 1923, introduction, Aamun Koitto 18/1923, 138–139; see also https://ort.fi/asiakirjat/autonomia-tomos/.

34. Patriarch Meletios’s address to the delegation, 4 July 1923, Aamun Koitto 23/1923, 179–180; Setälä, “Tomoksen vaiheilta”, 54–55. According to Setälä, the courteous words about the Russian Church expressed esteem and were no evidence that the decision was temporary; ibid., 56.

35. Patriarch Meletios’s address to the delegation, 4 July 1923, Aamun Koitto 23/1923, 179.

36. Feidas, Αὐτοκέφαλον καὶ Αὐτόνομον, 30 (final proposal 7e). The Synod of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem unanimously adopted the study as the Patriarchate’s contribution to the preparation of the Holy and Great Council (letter of Patriarch Benediktos, no. 510, 22 May 1979, at the beginning of the volume).

37. Feidas, Αὐτοκέφαλον καὶ Αὐτόνομον, 21 (“Οἰκουμενικὴ σύνοδος ἢ ὁμόθυμος συμφωνία πάντων τῶν πατριαρχικῶν θρόνων ἀποτελοῦν τὸ κανονικὸν ὄργανον ἀνακηρύξεως τοῦ αὐτοκεφάλου ἢ τοῦ αὐτονόμου ἐκκλησίας τινός”), 26 (“εἰσηγητικὴν γνώμην ἔχει κατ᾽ ἀρχὴν ὁ κανονικῶς ἢ κατ᾽ ἔθος ἀσκῶν ἐπ᾽ αὐτῆς διοικητικὴν δικαιοδοσίαν θρόνος”) and 29 (the criteria “ἰσχύουν κατ᾽ ἀναλογίαν καὶ περὶ τὴν ἀνακήρυξιν τοῦ «αὐτονόμου»”). Professor Charalambos K. Papastathis likewise presents, as factors common to all forms of independence including autonomy, the grant by the Mother Church and the approval of an ecumenical or other council, or the consent of all Orthodox Churches: Charalambos K. Papastathis, “Autonomous, Semi-autonomous Churches and Exarchates within the Patriarchate of Constantinople”, Kanon XXI (2010): 156–157. According to Papastathis, the Ecumenical Patriarchate proclaimed this principle when it granted autocephaly to the Church of Romania on condition that all Orthodox Churches approve it at an ecumenical or other great council.

38. Feidas, Αὐτοκέφαλον καὶ Αὐτόνομον, 28 (condition 11a: “ἐσωτερικὴν αὐτάρκειαν διὰ τὴν αὐτοδύναμον ἄσκησιν τοῦ δικαίου τῶν χειροτονιῶν καὶ κρίσεως ἐπισκόπων”) and 30.

39. Constantinos G. Pitsakis, “Autocéphalie et autonomie: À propos du développement historique de deux catégories principales dans la structure actuelle de l’Église orthodoxe”, Kanon XXI (2010): 40. Pitsakis also links these autonomies to the state-national character of the Orthodox Churches.

40. “Autonomy and the Means”, 2 and 2d: “The autonomous Church realizes its inter-Orthodox, inter-Christian, and inter-religious relations through the autocephalous Church from which it received autonomy.”

41. Aamun Koitto 9/1929 (5 May 1929), 105; cf. “Autonomy and the Means”, 2d.

42. Aamun Koitto 20/1929, 221; Aamun Koitto 3/1936 (17 Jan. 1936), 23.

43. Papastathis, “Autonomous, Semi-autonomous Churches”, 159.

44. “Autonomy and the Means”, sections 2e and 2f. Patriciu Dorin Vlaicu reads the reference to prevailing pan-Orthodox practice as requiring consensus under Apostolic Canon 34. “Autonomy and Orthodox Diaspora from the Point of View of the Documents Adopted by the Holy and Great Council”, Studia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai Theologia Orthodoxa 62, no. 1 (2017): 120. In both Finland (1923–1957) and Estonia (1996), Constantinople would itself have been a party to a dispute under section 2f; its role could therefore only be to seek consensus, not to act as judge.

45. Vlaicu, “Autonomy and Orthodox Diaspora”, 124.

46. Grigorios D. Papathomas (Γρηγόριος Δημ. Παπαθωμάς), Κανονικό Δίκαιο: Εισαγωγή στην Κανονική Οικονομία. Προθεωρία της Κανονικής Πράξης, Νομοκανονικά Ανάλεκτα 16 (Athens: Grigoris, 2024), 538–539, s.v. “Αυτόνομο”: absorption is “κάτι που δεν προβλέπεται πουθενά ως εκκλησιακό αδίκημα από τους Ιερούς Κανόνες, ακριβώς γιατί ήταν αδιανόητο γι’ αυτούς να επισυμβεί μια τέτοια αποτρόπαια πράξη”. For the “σύγχυση” of the Churches he refers to canon 2 of Constantinople I (381). Translation mine.

47. Victor Roudometof, “Religion and Nationalism in the Orthodox Religioscape: Southeastern and Post-Soviet Europe in Historical Perspective”, Social Sciences 15, no. 2 (2026): 101, p. 10; Metso and Takala-Roszczenko, “Bonds of Kindred Churches”, 387–388; Sebastian Rimestad, “The Council and ‘Alternative Orthodoxy’: Who Was not Invited to the Pan-Orthodox Council?”, in Makrides and Rimestad, The Pan-Orthodox Council of 2016, 135; Papastathis, “Autonomous, Semi-autonomous Churches”, 159. Papastathis states that the Tomos was restored at the autonomous Church’s request. Roudometof dates recognition to 20 February 1993; Rimestad dates the rupture to 1996.

Bibliography

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Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. Tomos for the Orthodox Archdiocese of Finland, 6 July 1923. Finnish translation by Lauri Tudeer. Aamun Koitto 18/1923 (7 September 1923): 138–139. Also Orthodox Church of Finland, “Autonomia-tomos”, https://ort.fi/asiakirjat/autonomia-tomos/. Accessed 28 September 2026.

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———. “Tomoksen vaiheilta” [On the history of the Tomos]. Ortodoksia 14 (1963): 47–59.

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Φωτό: Νίκος Παπαχρήστου