The Byzantine response to the autocephaly of the Orthodox Church in America consisted primarily in a number of letters and statements made in the early 1970s by the ancient autocephalous patriarchates of the Orthodox Church—the Churches of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem—along with the Church of Greece. Like most autocephalous Orthodox churches worldwide, the Byzantine churches rejected the grant of autocephaly by the Church of Russia to the American Metropolia (the former name of the OCA), and with the leadership of Patriarch Athenagoras I (Spyrou) of Constantinople, issued various responses detailing canonical, historical and practical arguments against the grant.