The Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church (ROAC, , РПАЦ; until 1998 it was called the Russian Orthodox Free Church, ROFC, , РПСЦ) is a Russian Orthodox church body headquartered in Suzdal, Russia. ROAC identifies as part of True Orthodoxy. In the Moscow Patriarchate, the ROCOR, and the mass media, it has the designation "Suzdal Schism" ().«Из Синодального архива. Дело епископа Валентина (Русанцова). Суздальский раскол. Определения Церковной Власти о лишении сана еп. Валентина (Русанцова)» . Официальный сайт Русской православной церкви заграницей.Ушел из жизни основатель «Суздальского раскола» // Вести FM, 16.01.2012 г.Маковецкий А. В., свящ. Миссионерская деятельность Владимирской епархии Московского Патриархата по преодолению «Суздальского Раскола». Публикация документов: Переписка Архиепископа Евлогия (Смирнова) и монаха Валентина (Русанцова) (1991—2008 гг.) // Архивариус. Киев: Serenity-Group. — 2016. — № 4 (8). — С. 15—27.
The beginning of this body was laid in 1990, when the cleric of the Moscow Patriarchate, Archimandrite Valentin (Rusantsov), was admitted to the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR) and began to create new parishes in his subordination, receiving the rank of bishop of Suzdal in 1991. In 1995, Bishops Valentin (Rusantsov), Theodore (Gineyevsky), Seraphim (Zinchenko) and their clergy and parishes separated from the ROCOR. The Suzdal diocese of Valentin (Rusantsov) became the center of the new church. The 2000s were characterized by the weakening of the ROAC and a reduction in the number of parishes and laity due to various conflicts and schisms. In 2009, the process of seizure of historical churches, previously transferred to the use of the ROAC, began. This process was completed in 2019, when the ROAC had no such churches left. In March 2015 Federal Bailiffs Service officials took two relics from a ROAC cathedral and gave them to the Russian Orthodox Church.
The ROAC as of 2017 consisted of: 35 officially registered parishes; 30 parishes operating as religious groups; 20-30 illegal ("catacomb") parishes; 10 bishops, 40 priests, 20 nuns and approximately 5,000 laypeople.
The ROAC reject the "Sergianist heresy" and holds that the sacraments of the Moscow Patriarchate (considered distinct from the Russian Orthodox Church that existed before the Bolshevik revolution) are anathema or invalid and ineffectual for salvation. The ROAC upholds in principle and emphasizes the ROCOR 1983 anathema against ecumenism.
History Formation
At the beginning of 1990, the clergy and the parish of the Tsar-Constantine Church in Suzdal, headed by Archimandrite Valentin (Rusantsov), who was banned from serving, decided to transfer to the ROCOR. The appeal of the Suzdal community to the Synod of Bishops of the ROCOR received a wide resonance in the church and secular society. The community that "went its own way" was supported by the democratic media, some deputies of the Supreme Council of Russia. Archimandrite Valentin and the community received significant assistance in the days when they had already left the ROC, but had not yet been officially accepted into the ROCOR, from the nonconformist TV program "The Fifth Wheel", as well as the Moscow newspaper "Moskovskiye Novosti" and the magazine "Ogonyok". On March 21 of the same year, the Synod of Bishops of the ROCOR received Archimandrite Valentin, clerics and parishioners of this parish into the ROCOR. On April 6, Archimandrite Valentin led his first divine service in the Tsar-Constantine Church as a cleric of the ROCOR. On May 15, 1990, the ROCOR Bishops' Council, despite the disagreement of a number of bishops, priests and laity, adopted the "Regulation on Free Parishes", which presupposed the beginning of the legal existence of ROCOR parishes on the territory of the USSR, that is, on the territory under the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate. The new structure became known as the "Russian Orthodox Free Church". The admission of Archimandrite Valentine to the jurisdiction of the ROCOR became an example for several dozen parish communities in various regions of the USSR. The most active supporters of the creation of legal canonical structures of the ROCOR in Russia, alternative to the Moscow Patriarchate, in the late 1980s were dissidents — both ecclesiastical and secular — who formed a democratic opposition to the Soviet regime, advocating the speedy dismantling of the entire Soviet system, including the "Soviet church".
At the same time, the ROCOR already had a bishop in the USSR, Bishop Lazar (Zhurbenko), who was distrustful of the new Russian government, was not in the mood to "come out of the catacombs" and skeptically regarded the mass transition of the "patriarchal" clergy to the ROCOR, while Archimandrite Valentin sought to expose the Moscow Patriarchate as actively as possible and call for Orthodox Christians to join the ROCOR. On the basis of different approaches to the forms of ROCOR church ministry in Russia, serious disagreements arose between Bishop Lazar and Archimandrite Valentin. Bishop Lazar began to avoid trips to Suzdal. On October 4, 1990, the Synod of Bishops of the ROCOR appointed Archimandrite Valentin (Rusantsov) as Exarch of the Russian Orthodox Free Church and Managing affairs at the Suzdal Diocesan Administration with the right to independently accept clergy and communities from the Moscow Patriarchate. Bishops' Council of the Moscow Patriarchate, held on October 25–27, 1990, in this regard, issued an appeal "To the archpastors, pastors and all faithful children of the Russian Orthodox Church", in which he called for the preservation of the unity of the Church, and appealed to the foreign hierarchs with a fraternal request not to create new obstacles to the unity of the Church. This request was not heard. On February 10, 1991, in the Church of the Holy Righteous Job the Long-Suffering in Brussels, Archimandrite Valentin (Rusantsov) was consecrated bishop of Suzdal and Vladimir. In the same year, the ROCOR's Diocese of Suzdal was registered with the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation. All this has further exacerbated the contradictions between Valentin (Rusantsov) and Lazar (Zhurbenko). By the middle of 1991, communion in prayer between these two hierarchs ceased. Realizing the impossibility of creating normal church administrative structures in Russia and striving to facilitate the possibility of joining the ROCOR as many clerics of the Moscow Patriarchate as possible, the Synod of Bishops of the ROCOR proclaimed the USSR a "mission territory", giving each of the bishops the right to establish parishes in any region of the country. Gradually, clear principles were revealed that divided the Russian Orthodox Free Church into Valentinian and Lazarite parts. As a rule, legal parishes (usually with their own churches) from the Moscow Patriarchate passed to Bishop Valentin, while Archbishop Lazar headed communities that remained in illegal or semi-legal position.
The desire to overcome the division between the Russian bishops led to the appearance in the ROCOR Synod of the idea of creating a structure in Russia, which by its very position would be "above the fray." In January 1992, the Synod sent to Russia the vicar of the Western European Diocese of ROCOR, Bishop of Cannes with the assignment to organize a permanent Synodal compound in Moscow, which would exercise the authority of the Synod of Bishops of ROCOR in Russia. Bishop Barnabas' rapprochement with the far-right "Pamyat" Society caused irreparable damage to the ROCOR reputation in Russia. The interference of Bishop Barnabas, or rather his secretary Archpriest Alexei Averyanov, in the affairs of other Russian ROCOR dioceses, the acceptance of clergy banned by other bishops, the actual management of parishes subordinate to other ROCOR bishops, and finally the subordination of Lazar and Valentin to Bishop Barnabas, which they did not recognize, led to an even greater discord in the ROCOR church administration in Russia. By the end of 1992, at least one hundred parishes in different regions of Russia and the "near abroad" were subordinate to Suzdal, but already in 1993 there was a decline in the activities of the ROCOR in Russia; internal ideological and personal conflicts lead Russian ROCOR structures into a state of disorganization. The Moscow Patriarchate clergy heretofore sympathizing with the ROCOR, have cooled down their desire to move to its jurisdiction. Some of those who came from the Moscow Patriarchate were disappointed about the "free church". Some, due to pressure from local authorities or the Moscow Patriarchate, some, for ideological reasons, return to the latter, some go to "independent" jurisdictions.
Separation from ROCOR In July 1993, Archbishop Lazar announced the administrative separation from the Synod of Bishops and the independent management of the diocese under the pretext of the Patriarch Tikhon and the supreme church administration Decree No 362 on November 20, 1920. In response, the ROCOR Synod of Bishops deprived Archbishop Lazar of the right to serve independently and manage parishes, and also dismissed Bishop Valentine, who refused to come to the Bishops' Council in 1993 "for health reasons", and in fact in protest against the Synod's connivance with the violations made by Bishop Barnabas. Despite the prohibitions, both dismissed bishops continued to manage the parishes that remained in their subordination, considering the dismissal itself to be an absolutely non-canonical measure, however, a fairly large group of parishes (almost all the legal parishes of Archbishop Lazarus and several valentinian ones) recognizes the validity of the decisions of the Council and passes into the direct management of the First Hierarch of the ROCOR, which was nominal character. In March 1994, in Suzdal, Archbishop Lazar and Bishop Valentin, who had previously seemed irreconcilable antagonists, announced the formation of a joint Provisional Supreme Church Administration of the Russian Orthodox Free Church. Archbishop Lazar was elected Chairman of the Provisional Supreme Church Administration, and his deputy, who actually became the head of the new body of church authority, Bishop Valentin, elevated by Archbishop Lazar to the rank of archbishop. The first acts of the Provisional Supreme Church Administration were the ordination of new bishops from among the closest collaborators of the founders of the Provisional Supreme Church Administration: on the part of Bishop Valentin — Bishops Theodore (Gineyevsky) (March 19, 1994) and Seraphim (Zinchenko) (March 20, 1994), on the part of Archbishop Lazar — Bishop Agathangel (Pashkovsky) (March 27, 1994). April 4–5, 1994 The Synod of Bishops of the ROCOR recognized the creation of the Suzdal Provisional Supreme Church Administration as illegal, banning Archbishop Lazar and Bishop Valentin from the priesthood and not recognizing the ordination of new bishops, as well as all other decisions of the Provisional Supreme Church Administration.