Only canon lawbreakers could openly enter the territory of the Alexandrian jurisdiction," - Cyril Hovorun on the decision of the Russian Orthodox Church

On this occasion, Cyril Hovorun wrote:

"We are dealing with the creation of a parallel jurisdiction on the territory of an ancient church. Its exclusive right to this territory was postulated during the establishment of the principle of canonical territory in the Church - the 6th canon of the First Ecumenical Council: "Let the ancient customs adopted in Egypt, Libya, and Pentapolis be preserved, so that the bishop of Alexandria has power over all of them." And although there were jurisdictional encroachments on North-East Africa before 325 (which, in fact, was why the canon was adopted), after the victory of the (neo-)Nicene party at the end of the 4th century, this was no longer the case. The reason for this is the unequivocal order of the Ecumenical Council and even the first of them. Also, the jurisdiction of Alexandria is, in a sense, the first precedent of canonical sovereignty. In the context of Orthodox canon law based on precedents, this is more than a constitution. Therefore, only canonical lawbreakers could openly violate this canon and enter the territory of the Alexandrian jurisdiction (this was the case with ROCOR at the beginning of the 20th century, as Natalia Vasilevich showed). An exception can also be considered Ethiopian autocephaly in the mid-20th century, which was a violation of a canon rule. However, this violation was indirect, since the Aksum Kingdom was not mentioned in the canon, because it had not yet converted to Christianity. The Russians, on the other hand, in 2021 directly violated this basic canon of the Ecumenical Council in Nicaea, which until now was a load-bearing beam at the very foundation of the scaffolding (Pan-Orthodox entity - Ed.)."