Moldovan Orthodox Church

Moldovan Orthodox Church Metropolis of Chișinău and All Moldova
19th century Nativity Cathedral in Chișinău.
Location
Territory	Moldova
Headquarters	Chișinău, Moldova
Statistics
Population - Total	1,286 communities
Information
Sui iuris church	Self-governing Metropolis of the Moscow Patriarchate
Established	1813/1944
Language	Moldavian,Slavonic
Music	Byzantine and Russian
Current leadership
Bishop	Metropolitan Vladimir
Website
www.mitropolia.md

The Moldovan Orthodox Church (Moldovan: Biserica Ortodoxă din Moldova; Russian: Правосла́вная це́рковь Молдо́вы) or the Metropolis of Chișinău and All Moldova (Moldovan: Mitropolia Chișinăului și a întregii Moldove; Russian: Кишинёвско-Молда́вская митропо́лия) is a self-governing church under the Russian Orthodox Church. Its canonical territory is the Republic of Moldova.

The Metropolis of Chișinău and All Moldova is the largest church in the country, and one of the two main Orthodox churches in Moldova (beside the Metropolis of Bessarabia, a self-governing metropolitanate of the Romanian Orthodox Church). In the 2004 census in Moldova 3,158,015 people or 95.5% of those declaring a religion claimed to be Eastern Orthodox Christians of all rites.

The head of the Moldovan Orthodox Church is Metropolitan Vladimir (Cantarean), who is a permanent member of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church.

It is believed that Orthodox Christianity was first brought to Romania and Moldova by the Apostle Andrew. Be that as it may, by the 14th century the Orthodox Church in Moldavia—today northeastern Romania, Moldova, and southwestern Ukraine—was under the authority of the Metropolitan of Galicia in modern-day western Ukraine. In 1391, however, the Patriarchate of Constantinople, which had jurisdiction over the region, elected a metropolitan for Moldavia specifically (Metropolis of Moldavia). By the 15th century this metropolitan was elected by the Church of Ohrid, but following the abolition of the latter it returned to the jurisdiction of the Church of Constantinople. During this time, in the 17th century, the churches in Moldavia transitioned from using Slavonic to Romanian.