The Latvian Orthodox Church () is an Eastern Orthodox church on Latvia, part of the wider Eastern Orthodoxy community. The primate of the church carries the title of Metropolitan of Riga and all Latvia (). This position has been occupied since October 27, 1990, by metropolitan . Until 2022, the Latvian Orthodox Church was universally recognized as a self-governing part of the Moscow Patriarchate (Russian Orthodox Church). On 8 September 2022, the Latvian Parliament directed the Latvian Orthodox Church to accept a status of autocephaly due to Patriarch Kirill's support of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. As of December 2022, none of the other Orthodox Churches have recognized the autocephaly of the Latvian Church. History Orthodoxy was planted in Latvia in the 11th century, when it became a mission field of the diocese of Polotsk. The country remained mostly pagan until it was conquered in the 13th century by the Catholic Teutonic Order. Prior to this, however, part of prominent Latgalian noblemen (e. g., Visvaldis, Vetseke) and a large part of Latgalian people, in general, had converted to Orthodoxy voluntarily. There were Eastern Orthodox churches in Jersika from the evidence of the Livonian Chronicle; many church-related words came into pre-Latvian languages in that time. An Orthodox presence continued after the Teutonic Order conquest at least officially, in the form of churches for Russian merchants and others, but these were small communities among a majority of Catholics before 1525 and Lutherans afterwards. After Latvia was annexed to the Russian Empire in the 18th century (most of Latvia, a result of the Great Northern War by the Treaty of Nystad, the Latgale region after the First Partition of Poland in 1772), Russian and Orthodox presence increased substantially, but the Eastern Orthodox Church remained foreign to the Latvians. The Latvian Orthodox Church as a body including ethnic Latvians as well as Russians dates back to the 1840s, when native Latvians (who were at that time subjects of the Russian Empire) petitioned Nicholas I of Russia to be allowed to conduct services in their native tongue. The Orthodox Church enjoyed some success in its missions among the Latvians due to its use of the Latvian language and by personal appeal of local Orthodox bishops who sought to support native Latvian inhabitants whose rights were limited by Baltic Germans. In the 1880s the Orthodox Nativity Cathedral was built in Riga. However, it was always regarded