During his tenure he faced several problems such as the lack of international recognition of the Georgian autocephaly and the persecution of the Georgian church by the Bolshevik regime established by the invading Russian army in February 1921.
The main issue of dispute mainly revolves around the church's autocephaly, although there are some other minor issues including Macedonia's Serb Orthodox minority (according to the last census, there are 40,000 citizens of the country declared as Serbs) and the question of some hundreds of Serb Orthodox shrines from the medieval Nemanjić period.
They were previously known as the Russian Exarchate of North America before autocephaly was granted to the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) in 1970.
He is consecrated in 1219 as the first Archbishop of the Serbian church, given autocephaly by Patriarch Manuel I of Constantinople, who was then in exile at Nicaea.