Mr. Raigorodsky. Yes, sir.
Mr. Jenner. Is there anything else in the 1-page summary prepared or given to you by Father Royster that you would like to comment upon?
Mr. Davis. I would like to ask—did we ever get to the real reason for the split of the church?
Mr. Raigorodsky. I just made a statement a while ago.
Mr. Davis. I didn't understand—what was the reason that the church was split?
Mr. Raigorodsky. Well, they just couldn't get along together. I mean, it's purely personality.
You see, Father Royster at that time—that's the main point—Father Royster doesn't mean anything to you or to me, but to lots of Russians it means everything. You see, Father Royster at that time belonged to the Ukraine branch of the church. You see, he couldn't get ordained, but then he tried to, and I tried to help him to be ordained by Metropolitan and Anastasia, but he couldn't fulfill the requirements so he tried to get in through Metropolitan Leonty. He couldn't quite get in because of their requirements, but they suggested that he will be ordained by the Russian Ukranian Church, of which Father Joseph Bogdan, B-o-g-d-a-n [spelling] had the jurisdiction of the Ukranian branch of Metropolitan Leonty's branch of the Russian Church in this country, and so, you see, and that was—now, we have to go back through the basic facts that Russians and Ukranians have never gotten along together, and in fact, Ukranians were separative—they wanted to separate from the rest of the Russians and he will have their church to become part of their parish. That was just going against the grain of every Russian.
Now, all those things tended to create dissatisfaction and fights, I mean verbal fights, of course—no physical violence of any kind, but verbal fights, and Father Royster decided to pull out and he asked me if I would help him, and I said, "Sure, as long as it is a Greek Orthodox Church," and that's how it happened.
You see, some of the statements—like he said, "In September of 1958 the parish was transferred from the jurisdiction of Bishop Bogdan to that of Metropolitan Leonty, the Russian Metropolia."
Well, he is Russian Metropolia, but it isn't finished—in this country.