Prominent Russian Orthodox prelate suspended
July 26, 2024
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CWN Editor's Note: The Russian Orthodox Patriarchate of Moscow has announced that Metropolitan Hilarion has been suspended “temporarily” from his post as head of the Budapest diocese, during an investigation of his leadership.
Although the announcement did not specify the reason for the investigation, a recent story in Novaya Gazeta Europe had disclosed that Metropolitan Hilarion has been charged with sexual harassment by a subdeacon who lived with him. Hilarion has denied the charge, and claimed that he is being blackmailed.
Metropolitan Hilarion is one of the most prominent prelates in the Russian Orthodox Church, having served as the head of the patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations—in effect, the “foreign minister” of the Russian Orthodox Church. He was dismissed from that role in 2022 amid suggestions that he was not sufficiently supportive of Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine. Ironically the newspaper that aired the complaint against him, Novaya Gazeta Europe, has also been accused of sympathy for Ukraine, and is classified by the Russian government as an “undesirable organization.”
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