The OCA website has published a letter sent by Patriarch Kirill of Moscow to Metropolitan Tikhon of the OCA.
OCA - Headline News - Metropolitan Tikhon receives greetings from Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, Bulgarian Diocese
The most relevant portion reads:
I hope that through the efforts of Your Beatitude the American Church will restore full-fledged relations with other Local Orthodox Churches, restore peace and harmony within herself and make comfortable the further life of your predecessor at the Metropolitan See of Washington.
Not only is this letter to Met. Tikhon a slap in the face telling the OCA to get their own house in order, but also Patriarch Kirill asks the OCA to "make comfortable" the life of Metropolitan Jonah. With his sister seriously ill and his aging parents, Metropolitan Jonah should be shown compassion. Met. Jonah is neither a thief nor rapist.
Wow. The third Rome has spoken. Praise the Lord.
Does anyone else find this (boldfaced text) a little disturbing? Webster's defines "full-fledged" as "fully developed, total, complete, having attained complete status." To what degree are relations between the OCA and other Local Orthodox Churches incomplete?
They don't all recognize its autocephaly.
In practice that's not all that important; they all recognize the OCA as part of the Church, but it's still an issue.
So those Local Orthodox Churches that do not recognize the autocephaly of the OCA recognized it at one time? That recognition of autocephaly is what must be restored?
No. To my knowledge, the other local Orthodox Churches never recognized our autocephaly.
Russia, Georgia, Bulgaria, Poland and the Czech and Slovak Lands have recognized the autocephaly.
Antioch and Serbia have recognized the jurisdiction of Russia over the canonical territory of the OCA, and the roots of their own jurisdiction in the same territory coming from the Russian.
Albania has been neutral, although the OCA's Diocese of New England gave birth to the Church of Albania.
Romania has its own problems with recognizing no one's jurisdiction outside Romania.
Only Constantinople, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Cyprus and the Church of Greece (i.e. the "Greek Church") have opposed the OCA's autocephaly. But then, all them except perhaps Cyprus at one time or another has opposed their ethnarch's canon 28 take on this, by setting up their own jurisdiction in the "barbarian lands" here.