If someone comes to Germany and wants to find an Orthodox community, they will most likely end up in a parish of the Russian Orthodox Church, the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, or the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate.

Father Petro Bokanov, a priest of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine who has lived in Germany for almost 30 years, said this in an interview with LF.

According to him, when speaking about the presence of the Russian Church in Germany, it is important to understand that this does not refer to a single organization.

“There is the Russian Orthodox Church itself. There is also the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, which retains its own administration but remains in canonical communion with the Moscow Patriarchate. There is the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, which began actively establishing communities abroad after the start of the full-scale invasion. At the same time, there is also the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the Diaspora, which is under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople,” the priest says.

He emphasizes that the scale of these churches’ presence varies considerably.

“According to the data I collected for my publication, the Russian Orthodox Church itself had around 130 parishes in Germany, while the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia had 78. At the time, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate had 25 parishes, 10 pastoral centers, and 36 priests. The Orthodox Church of Ukraine, by comparison, had three parishes and two active priests,” Bokanov says.

According to him, if someone comes to Germany and wants to find an Orthodox community, they are far more likely to find themselves near a parish of the Russian Orthodox Church, the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, or the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate than a parish of the autocephalous Ukrainian Church.