20 MARCH 2022: As the small group of defrocked former clergymen in Colchester England continues to perpetuate the falsehood that they remain Orthodox clergymen and that the building on Military Road in Colchester remains an Orthodox Church, it is hereby reiterated that these individuals were defrocked from the ranks of the clergy and that neither they, nor any of the ‘sacraments’ that they purport to celebrate, are canonically Orthodox. As has been directly clarified to those who have contacted the Church, such false sacraments do not bear the grace of the Church; any faithful who, being misled, have had their children or themselves baptised in this context should swiftly find an actual Orthodox parish where a true baptism can be performed by an actual priest.
Persistent claims that the clergy and parish were received into the Romanian Orthodox Church — to whom they were never released — are false, as has been confirmed in writing to the Primate by the local Bishop of the Romanian Orthodox Church. Circulation of a wholly illegitimate letter by a priest, claiming otherwise, is simple deception.
We call upon the former clergymen in question to at long last cease with their falsehoods and self-willed, anti-church actions, and find repentance and peace; and for all pious Orthodox Christians to avoid the scandalous circumstances of that former Orthodox parish with diligence.
Synodal Secretariat for Inter-Orthodox Relations 