The Estonian Apostolic Orthodox Church (; EOC) is an Orthodox church in Estonia under the direct jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. Under Estonian law it is the legal successor to the pre–World War II Estonian Orthodox Church, which in 1940 had over 210,000 faithful, three bishops, 156 parishes, 131 priests, 19 deacons, two monasteries, and a theological seminary; the majority of the faithful were ethnic Estonians. Its official name is the Orthodox Church of Estonia. The current primate of the church is Stephanos, Metropolitan of Tallinn and all Estonia, elected in 1999. History Little is known about the history of the church in the area until the 17th and 18th centuries, when many Old Believers fled there from Russia to avoid the liturgical reforms introduced by Patriarch Nikon of Moscow.In the 18th and 19th centuries, Estonia was a part of the Russian Empire. In the 1850s a rumour spread that the Orthodox Church promised to provide everybody who converted to Orthodoxy a piece of land of their own somewhere in Russia. Some 65,000 Estonian peasants were converted to the Orthodox faith in the hope of obtaining land, and numerous Orthodox churches were built. Later, when the rumour turned out to be a hoax, a great part of the new Orthodox peasants returned to the Lutheran Church. In the late 19th century, a wave of Russification was introduced, supported by the Russian hierarchy but not by the local Estonian clergy. The Cathedral of St. Alexander Nevsky in Tallinn and the Pühtitsa (Pukhtitsa) convent in Kuremäe in East Estonia were also built around this time. Autonomy under the Moscow Patriarchate After the Republic of Estonia was proclaimed in 1918, the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, St. Tikhon, in 1920 recognised the Estonian Apostolic Orthodox Church (EAOC) as being autonomous (Resolution No. 1780), postponing the discussion of its autocephaly. Archbishop Aleksander Paulus was elected and ordained , head of the EAOC. Prior to this, Soviet Russia had adopted a Marxist–Leninist ideology which held as an ideological goal the elimination of religion and its replacement with state atheism. In response, Patriarch Tikhon had excommunicated the Soviet leadership in 1918, leading to a period of intense persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church. In April 1922, Tikhon was imprisoned, and the Estonian clergy lost contact with the Moscow Patriarchate. Transfer to the Ecumenical Patriarchate In September 1922 the Council of the Estonian Apostolic