Metropolitan Theodosius (Lazor)

The Tomos of Autocephaly ended a long argument about what the Russian metropolia in America actually was. Granted by the Church of Russia in 1970 and never recognized by Constantinople, it declared the Orthodox Church in America self-governing — a decision still contested between the Churches, and one whose consequences the American Church has lived inside ever since. Theodosius, then Bishop of Alaska, headed the delegation that went to Moscow to receive it.

Weeks later he was back in Alaska for the glorification of St Herman. That mattered in a particular way: a Church arguing that it was native to this continent glorified a saint of this continent, in the place where he had lived, within weeks of claiming its independence. The two acts say the same thing. Theodosius had initiated the process that led to the glorification.

His primacy covered the OCA's institutional middle age: the settling of its diocesan structures, the growth of St Vladimir's and St Tikhon's, further glorifications of North American saints, and the steady work of a small autocephalous Church with large claims. He took part in the Ligonier meeting of 1994 alongside Archbishop Iakovos and Metropolitan Philip.

He retired in 2002 in poor health, having led the Church for a quarter of a century.

In the years after his retirement, an accounting crisis broke in the OCA's central administration: allegations, subsequently substantiated in large part, that funds given to the Church had been misappropriated over a long period. The misconduct is dated by the Church's own later investigations to years that fall within his primacy, and the failure of oversight is part of what was found.

This page does not adjudicate that. It records it because a memorial that told only the first half of the story — Moscow, Alaska, St Herman — would be a flattering account rather than a true one, and because the man who forced the accounting, Archbishop Job of Chicago, has a page in this same section.

Metropolitan Theodosius stands at the point where the Orthodox Church in America became, formally, an American Church: he carried home the Tomos that declared it self-governing and he glorified the first saint of this continent, both within a few months of each other, both while he was Bishop of Alaska and not yet forty.

His primacy is also the period the OCA's later financial reckoning reaches back into, and this page says so. He is not glorified and no veneration is implied here. What is recorded is a man whose best work was done early and in public, and whose administration was found wanting afterwards — which is a more ordinary shape for a life than memorials usually allow.