ΤΗΕ METROPOLITAN ELDER NAIROBI MAKARIOS FOR RUSSIAN INVASION

Orthodox Archdiocese of Nairobi

YIERONDA ARCHBISHOP MAKARIOS

Beloved brothers and sisters in Christ, I wish to take this opportunity to address and encourage you despite the challenges we are facing as a Church, Christ will always abide in us.
We have built this Church for decades which I have dedicated my life to the service and life of the Church for over 40 years since I arrived here in Kenya. I have built and consecrated most of our Churches, ordained and promoted majority of our priests and their families in kenya which has taken the favour and mercy of God to be where we are today.
During these years we have had challenges and difficulties in meeting the needs of our priests as well as the parishes to the best level we could only to meet their minimum. The Archdiocese in conjunction with the African Orthodox Church of Kenya through their leaders, the Bishoprics, and the local parishes have been striving to alleviate and promote the life of our priests as well as developing the parishes to take care of their daily needs.
This has not been met to our satisfaction for the obvious reasons which are well known to us due to financial constraints which we are seriously looking on the way forward to solve the problem.
The invasion of the Russian Church into our Patriarchate territory due to recognition of Ukraine Autocephalous by our Pope and Patriarch Theodoros II, has been politicised by the Moscow Patriarchate and as a result our priests have been involved in this politics to an extent of denouncing their priesthood and joining them.
Today morning before going for the Divine Liturgy at St Paul Kagira, I saw it fit to visit our Church in Zimmerman after reports reached my office that a priest purported to be from Russia was to celebrate with some of our priests which goes against our cannons.
The said priest didn't turn up but a group of priests came and upon seeing me and my team left leaving the priest in charge who was very rude, shouting at us and calling us all sorts of names to attract attention from passersby. I explained to him that we cannot accept this kind of aggression and we are out to defend the flock of Christ. After leaving the place, we learnt that they came back together with the intruder priest (Russian) and celebrated together something we confirmed with the photos appearing here.
I wish to state as follows:-
A. We as the Orthodox Church under the jurisdiction of Alexandria and all Africa under the spiritual guidance of His Beatitude Theodoros II have nothing to do with this priest and his associates who do not respect the territorial boundaries as prescribed by our Cannons.
B. All priests who celebrated with him today and any other who is planning to join that group stands suspended indefinitely. Letters to this effect will be circulated to all our Churches for our Christians to disassociate with them.
C. The imposter priest and his company are barred from entering and performing any service in our Church premises whatsoever.
D. I urge all priests Royal to Christ and the Throne of St. Mark to remain vigilant, safeguarding our faith and properties as well as shun any of those hellbent activities to bring division and confusion in our Church.
We pray that God will forgive them as we seek their repentance and recognition of their mistakes as we endeavour to be one body of Christ.
Mean while we are tirelessly working together with our Local Bishops to seek the best way forward in addressing all this issues.
Grace upon God's people always.

In His Service,
YIERONDA ARCHBISHOP MAKARIOS