Geneva meeting proposes "episcopal assemblies" for diaspora

(OCA News) - In a communique issued yesterday by the Fourth Pre-Conciliar Pan-Orthodox Conference, held in Chambesy, a suburb of Geneva, Switzerland, from June 6-12, the Old World Orthodox Churches announced they had agreed “to create new episcopal assemblies in some regions of the world to order the question of the Diaspora.” The agreement, long sought by Constantinople, stated that the “new episcopal assemblies” would be chaired by “bishops of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in the given region”, and in their absence, “the bishops in accordance with the order of the Diptichs of the Churches.”

The communique was issued in French, Greek and Russian - but not in English. Delegates to the conference included four representatives from the Serbian Church; three representatives each from the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the Moscow Patriarchate, and the Church of Greece; two each from Antioch, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Jerusalem, Georgia, and Poland; and one each from Alexandria, Romania, Albania and the Church of the Czech and Slovak Lands. There were no representatives from the actual “Diaspora” (North or South America, Asia, or Western Europe) - nor from the Orthodox Church in America, or any of the autonomous Orthodox Churches (Finland, Japan, etc.)...

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