An Impatient Patience: Achieving Orthodox Unity and Canonical Normalization in the West

Four years ago, in June of 2009, something momentous took place in World Orthodoxy. At the invitation of His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, delegates from the fourteen Autocephalous Orthodox Churches participated in the historic Fourth Pre-Conciliar Pan-Orthodox Conference, meeting at the Center of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Chambésy-Geneva, Switzerland. They expressed their "desire for the swift healing of every canonical anomaly that has arisen from historical circumstances and pastoral requirements, such as in the so-called Orthodox Diaspora, with a view to overcoming every possible influence that is foreign to Orthodox ecclesiology."