Personnel divisions in the Moscow Patriarchate / Hilarion lost Kirill’s confidence. He did not support his tough line against Ukraine – attitude.sk

Hilarion lost Kirill’s confidence. He did not support his tough line against Ukraine. The Holy Synod unexpectedly removed the office of “Minister of Foreign Affairs” of the Russian Orthodox Church. He deported him from Moscow to Budapest. Metropolitan Hilarion during the International Eucharistic Congress in September 2021 in Budapest. Photo: Profimedia / EPA-EFE The influential Volocollamic Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev was removed from the post of Head of the External Affairs Department of the Moscow Patriarchate and appointed as a Metropolitan for Russian Orthodox believers in Budapest and Hungary. Meanwhile, Hilarion, 55, has held the office once, from May 2003 to March 2009. Hilarion was still considered the most powerful man in the Moscow Patriarchate after Patriarch Kirill, a shrewd tactician and foreign policy strategist for the Russian Orthodox Church. As the Moscow Patriarchate announced on its website on Tuesday, Hilarion’s transfer was decided by the Holy Synod, the governing episcopal body, under the leadership of Patriarch Kirill. As a result of the rosary, Hilarion lost his seat in the Holy Synod and the chair of the rector of the Church’s postgraduate and doctoral study program, St. Cyril and Methodius. Hilarion’s successors Hilarion will be replaced in the academic capacity by Maxim Kozlov, chairman of the Patriarchal Commission for Church Education. The new chairman of the Foreign Affairs Department of the Moscow Patriarchate has been appointed by the Corsican Metropolitan Antony Sevriuk, who has so far led the Paris-based Exarchate for Western Europe. Antony will take over the current chair of Metropolitan Hilarion at the Holy Synod, as well as his title “Volokolam”. Antony was once the personal secretary of Patriarch Kirill and has long been considered his close confidant. From early 2018 to mid-2019, he served as Russian Orthodox Bishop in Austria. According to Regina Elsner of the Center for Eastern European and International Studies in Berlin, 37-year-old Antony “as the head of the Western European exarchate knows Patriarch Kirill’s foreign policy well, because the exarchate was established only in 2018 as a structural response to Constantinople’s intervention in the Patriarch of Ukraine.” Loss of the patriarch’s trust? In March 2009, Hilarion took over the office of “Foreign Minister” after Kirill, whom the Russian Orthodox Church’s Supreme Staff had elected patriarch two months earlier. Hilarion was generally considered the second in the Russian Orthodox Church, shaping its relations with other Orthodox churches and the ecumenical dialogue with the Catholic Church and other Christian denominations. According to Barbara Hallensleben, director of the Center for the Study of the Eastern Churches at the University of Friborg in Switzerland, “the decision of the Holy Synod shows that Metropolitan Hilarion has apparently lost the trust of the patriarch.” The Moscow ecclesiastical leadership is clearly unanimous about the current war. Read also Orthodoxy in Ukraine The division of believers is deepening. Some go away from Moscow, others want to stay Orthodox eparchies in the Crimea and Luhansk remain loyal to the Moscow Patriarchate. Metropolitan Hilarion, who was a frequent guest at the Vatican, was considered a hardliner in the ecclesiastical struggle between the Patriarch of Moscow and Constantinople for Ukraine. However, since the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, he has been conspicuous by his restraint, while Kirill almost daily publicly justifies the Russian invasion. According to Elsner, Hilarion’s removal and transfer to Hungary is “a degradation from a foreign minister to a regional bishop.” This is also a sign of a lack of trust. ” However, according to the expert, Kirill himself finds himself in an increasingly international isolation: “The church in Ukraine is turning away from him. With the exception of Hungary, most countries distance themselves from the Moscow Patriarchate. “Elsner does not rule out that” Hilarion was too reserved for the patriarch’s taste. Although he never distanced himself from Putin’s war, he did not adopt the patriarch’s radical war rhetoric. In Kirill’s eyes, it can be a sign of weakness or disloyalty. ” Church observers told Tagespost that Hilarion was a scapegoat for the fact that the Moscow Patriarchate had lost a lot of prestige and influence for its confrontational church policy. Not only the Ukrainian Orthodox Church turned away from Moscow and emphasized its independence. Russian Orthodoxy in Lithuania is also distancing itself from Kirill and his course. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán recently defended the Moscow patriarch and prevented him from being included in the EU’s sanctions list. According to Elsner, Budapest is an important post for the Moscow Patriarchate: “Kirill and Orbán are important allies on the conservative value front … Hilarion has always supported the anti-Western course – even though its tone was less sharp than that of Patriarch Kirill.”