The Bulgarian Diocese in Exile was a diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, which existed from 1965 to 1976, when it left the ROCOR and was received by the Orthodox Church in America. This diocese had its origins in the decision of Metropolitan Andrei (Petkov), then head of the Bulgarian Eastern Orthodox Diocese of the USA, Canada and Australia (named at that time the Bulgarian Diocese of North and South America and Australia), to regularize his relations with his mother church, with whom he had broken relations after World War II and subsequently was elected to the rank of metropolitan.