The study of the Orthodox Church has greatly expanded over the last three decades, after the fall of the Soviet Union enabled a freer and more liberal exchange with most of the Orthodox majority societies that had been situated behind the Iron Curtain since World War II. At the same time, the Orthodox Church, which prides itself of being the unchanging Christian truth, has massively changed over these three decades, arguably as a result of this new freedom, which allows it to present itself as a major religious and civilisational player on the global scene. Such a new-found self-consciousness cannot but create rifts and mutual suspicion within this ecclesiastical organisation, which claims to be unitary but is lacking a common central authority. Unlike the Roman Catholic Church, which is clearly centred on the Vatican, the Orthodox Church is a church family of more than a dozen independent (autocephalous), mostly nationally connoted churches, such as the Russian, the Serbian, the Greek, and the Romanian Orthodox Church. The total number of such churches is not even mutually agreed upon, as the autocephaly of some churches (esp. The Orthodox Church of Ukraine and the Orthodox Church in America) is not universally acknowledged.