The Autonomous Church of Sinai

The smallest autonomous church in the Orthodox world: one monastery, its dependencies, and an archbishop who is also its abbot, elected by the brotherhood and consecrated by the Patriarch of Jerusalem. St Catherine’s at the foot of the mountain has never been destroyed or abandoned since Justinian built its walls in the sixth century, which makes it the oldest continuously inhabited Christian monastery on earth, and its independence is a recognition of that continuity rather than a modern grant.