Synod of Polotsk

An editor has performed a search and found that sufficient sources exist to establish the subject's notability. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Synod of Polotsk" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (July 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

This article does not cite any sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Synod of Polotsk" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (July 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

The Synod of Polotsk was a local synod held on February 12, 1839, by the clergy of the Ruthenian Greek Catholic Church in the city of Polotsk for reunification with the Russian Orthodox Church. Polotsk was the center of the Greek Catholic Archeparchy of Polotsk-Vitebsk, the metropolitan seat of all Greek Catholics after the partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

The Synod of Polotsk was the culmination of the plans for reunification with the Russian Orthodox Church starting from to-be Metropolitan Joseph (Semashko), a Russophile Greek Catholic protopresbyter, who presented a document to Emperor Nicholas I of Russia with a draft ("About the situation of the Uniate Church in Russia and the means to return it to the bosom of the Orthodox Church") outlining the gradual rejoining of the Greek Catholic Church within the Russian Empire to the Russian Orthodox Church on January 17, 1828.

The resolution of the Synod of Polotsk led to the Russian Orthodox Church immediately gaining 1607 formerly Greek Catholic parishes and 1.2 million new faithful under its jurisdiction. The exception to the Polotsk Synod was the Ruthenian Greek Catholic Eparchy of Chełm, which was not terminated until 1875 by the Russians.