The primate of the church carries the title of Metropolitan of Riga and all Latvia (Latvian: Rīgas un visas Latvijas metropolīts).

There were Eastern Orthodox churches in Jersika from the evidence of the Livonian Chronicle; many church-related words came into pre-Latvian languages in that time.

An Orthodox presence continued after the Teutonic Order conquest at least officially, in the form of churches for Russian merchants and others, but these were small communities among a majority of Catholics before 1525 and Lutherans afterwards.

[citation needed] After Latvia was annexed to the Russian Empire in the 18th century (most of Latvia, a result of the Great Northern War by the Treaty of Nystad, the Latgale region after the First Partition of Poland in 1772), Russian and Orthodox presence increased substantially, but the Eastern Orthodox Church remained foreign to some Latvians.

[4] Pommers succeeded in winning recognition from the government by 1926 and, against much opposition from leftists and others, in stabilizing the situation of the church.

The church suffered oppression during this period, as did organized religion throughout the Soviet Union, though this was partly mitigated from 1943 to 1948 (due to the support of the Church during World War II) and in the last years of the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev.

Metropolitan Augustine of Riga and all Latvia, primate of the LOC, was summoned to Moscow where he was forced, on March 28, 1941, to sign a decree recognizing the situation.

[4] In 1944, after the Soviet re-occupation of Latvia, Metropolitan Augustine and numerous members of the LOC were forced to go in exile in West Germany.

[citation needed] In 2001, a council of the Latvian Orthodox Church canonised Archbishop Jānis in recognition of his martyrdom in 1934.

[5] In 2006, the "Order of the holy martyr Jānis" was instituted to reward those who have served the Eastern Orthodox Church and its aims.

The decision came a few days after the president of Latvia, Egils Levits, tabled the bill saying that "this bill restores the historical status of the Orthodox Church of Latvia", stressing that the independence of the Church established "by the 6(19) July 1921 Tomos issued by Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia Tikhon to Archbishop Jānis Pommers and the Cabinet of Ministers Regulation of 8 October 1926 on the Status of the Orthodox Church".