The Global Church Era · 1917-present · Georgia (Caucasus)
The Georgian Orthodox Church Restored
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About This Movement
Georgia's church had been autocephalous since antiquity until that status was abolished in 1811 and the church absorbed into the Russian one. On 12 March 1917 by the old calendar — 25 March by the new — an assembly of Georgian bishops, clergy and laypeople declared the autocephaly restored, without waiting for anyone's permission; a council that September elected Kyrion II as Catholicos-Patriarch. Kyrion was dead by 1918 in circumstances the record itself leaves unresolved. Ambrosi submitted a protest memorandum in 1922 and was put on trial for it. Then came the Soviet decades, which fell on this church as heavily as on any. Recognition came slowly and from two directions: Moscow acknowledged the restored autocephaly on 31 October 1943, and Constantinople issued its tomos on 4 March 1990. Ilia II has been Catholicos-Patriarch since 1977.
Sources
- The dated sequence of events: autocephaly restoration declared 12 (25) March 1917 by an assembly of bishops, clergy and laity; the September 1917 council electing Catholicos-Patriarch Kyrion II; Russian recognition in 1943; Constantinople's tomos in 1990 (primary) — The 1917 and 1943 dates are well documented (National Archives of Georgia; Orthodox History); the exact status of the 1990 tomos is less certain, though the event itself is agreed.
- The church's own restoration documents: the March 1917 declaration and council acts; Kyrion II's correspondence with Moscow; the record of the Soviet persecution that followed (primary) — Both churches' own competing claims to legitimacy are presented side by side; Catholicos Kyrion's death in 1918 remains genuinely unresolved in the historical record. Sources are largely in Georgian, which limits outside access.
- Mikheil Kartvelishvili's published work on the 1917 restoration (National Archives of Georgia) (secondary) — Published scholarship; English-language monographs on this church are thin, reflecting how little has been written about it outside Georgia.