The statutes of the Diocese of Sourozh

This article traces the history of the drafting of the statutes of the Diocese of Sourozh, a structure of the Russian Orthodox Church in Great Britain under the leadership of Metropolitan Anthony Bloom. Peter Scorer adopts a historical and documentary approach, drawing on speeches, letters and first-hand accounts to reconstruct an institutional process spanning nearly twenty-five years. The central idea is that these statutes, born out of a British legal requirement related to registration as a charitable association, became the expression of a coherent ecclesiology, grounded in the eucharistic theology of Afanasiev and Zizioulas, as well as in the decisions of the Moscow Council of 1917-1918. The article makes a twofold contribution: it documents an original canonical experience within the Orthodox diaspora and sheds light on the vision of Metropolitan Anthony, who conceived these statutes as a blueprint for a local Church transcending national and ethnic affiliations.