Latin America, as a region, has remained outside the scope of territorial expansion of the countries of the Orthodox Christian tradition. However, growing migrations from both Eastern Europe and the Middle East throughout the twentieth century and the first years of the twenty-first have brought a significant Orthodox presence to the continent. In this sense, and since the Orthodox churches are characterised by not having extensive missionary activity, their presence in the Latin American continent is almost always linked to migrant ethnic communities that try to rebuild their original ways of life. This does not make Orthodoxy a religious confession exclusively for migrants and their descendants, however. An increasing number of native Latin Americans have joined, interested in spiritual options other than those traditionally practised in Latin America. This essay will provide a general review of the growth of the Orthodox Church in some countries of the region, with special emphasis on Mexico.

What is Orthodox Christianity?

Orthodox Christianity is the term used to describe the churches that historically remained under the authority of the patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem after the separation between them and the headquarters of Rome in the year 1054. The reasons for this division in Christianity were not only dogmatic but also politicalcultural. As for the former, the Orthodox Christians opposed the Church of Rome when it added the formula of the ‘filioque’ to the recitation of the Creed. For Western Christians, the third person of the Holy Trinity, the Holy Spirit, proceeds from the Father and the Son, whereas Eastern Orthodoxy holds that the Spirit proceeds only from the Father. As to the latter, political differences between the Byzantine Empire and first the Carolingian Empire, then the Holy Roman Empire, marked an open rivalry between two geopolitical entities. In addition to the above, the Pope of Rome intended to assume an authority of full jurisdiction in the space of the Christian East beyond the traditional title based on the idea of the ‘primacy of honour’, something that the patriarchs and Eastern hierarchs were not willing to accept.

In the sixteenth century, the Moscow Patriarchate, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, emerged within the bosom of the Orthodox churches.