On Tuesday, Metropolitan Hilarion was relieved of his duties as the Russian Orthodox Church’s leading ecumenical authority.
Since 2009, the 55-year-old had been the chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations.
One of the most internationally recognizable people in the Russian Orthodox Church is the theologian, Church historian, and composer. He met with Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis in his capacity as the Moscow Patriarchate’s “foreign minister.”
On June 7, the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church decided that Metropolitan Hilarion would manage the Diocese of Budapest and Hungary, according to the Moscow Patriarchate’s official website.
He was “released from his obligations” as chairman of the Department for External Church Relations and as a permanent member of the Holy Synod, which was linked to his duty as chairman, according to the statement.
Metropolitan Anthony of Chersonesus and Western Europe, 37, will be the next leader of the Department for External Church Relations, according to the official website. It made no attempt to explain the personnel changes.
Metropolitan Hilarion, as the Russian Orthodox Church’s leading ecumenical officer, attended international Catholic gatherings and visited the Vatican.
He conducted the opening catechesis at the International Eucharistic Congress in Budapest in September 2021.
He met with Pope Francis in the Vatican in December 2021. The meeting boosted hopes for a second meeting between Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, the Russian Orthodox Church’s spiritual leader. However, the preparations were shelved once Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Cardinal Péter Erd, Archbishop of Esztergom-Budapest and Primate of Hungary, met with Metropolitan Hilarion on his recent visit to Hungary.
The Russian Orthodox official expressed opposition to war in an interview in January, on the brink of the all-out fighting in Ukraine, stressing the toll of previous clashes.
“First, let’s remember at what cost did Russia win those wars. The price was millions of lives. Secondly, let’s recall that every war brings incalculable disasters to people,” he said.
“We must also remember that an outcome of any war is unpredictable. Can we assume that Russia won the First World War? Let’s remember the enthusiasm with which Russia entered it, what patriotic feelings accompanied the Russian Empire’s entry into this war. Could anyone then imagine that in three years Russia would collapse?”
“For all these reasons, I am deeply convinced that a war is not a method of solving the accumulated political problems.”
However, Metropolitan Hilarion was afterwards accused of failing to expressly condemn the invasion of Ukraine on a large scale.
In March, he was forced to resign from his position as a professor at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland.
Metropolitan Hilarion “did not feel able to challenge Russia’s evident breach of international law,” according to Mariano Delgado, dean of theology faculty.
He went on to say that Patriarch Kirill’s description of Russia’s war against Ukraine as a “metaphysical” conflict was “scandalous.”
The patriarch has come under fire for his stance on the conflict, and he narrowly missed being placed on a European Union sanctions list after Hungary, one of the EU’s 27 member states, expressed disapproval.
In recent months, Orthodox Christian media speculated that Metropolitan Hilarion was attempting to distance himself from Patriarch Kirill.
The Russian Orthodox Church is an autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Church with an estimated 150 million members, making up more than half of all Orthodox Christians on the planet.