The war in Ukraine has shaken the organizational chart of the Russian Orthodox Church. The Patriarch of Moscow, Kiril I, has decided to remove from his post Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, who as chairman of the Department of Foreign Affairs of the Moscow Patriarchate was one of the most visible figures at the international level.
Hilarion, 55, had expressed his reluctance to war in some statements during these months. For example, in March, he said that if the last Tsar, Nicholas II, had listened to Rasputin and had not entered the First World War, Russia would not have suffered any catastrophe. In January he already pointed out that the "patriotic feelings" that led Russia to enter that war should be remembered. "For all these reasons I think that a war is not the method to solve the accumulated political problems," he assured, before the invasion.
The Russian Orthodox Church has not clarified the motivations that have led to the replacement of the head of foreign affairs, who has held the position since Patriarch Kiril was enthroned as head of the Moscow Patriarchate in 2009. Since the beginning of the conflict, Kiril has blessed repeatedly the invasion as a holy war against the decadent values of the West, a fact that has led the Ukrainian Church to rebel and break with Moscow by declaring, at the end of May, the full autonomy and independence of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, thereby the Moscow Patriarchate has lost several million faithful.
Many of the Ukrainian dioceses soon began to stop naming Kiril in their prayers. The patriarch agrees with Vladimir Putin in the vision of the Russkiy Mir, the "Russian world" that associates parts of the former USSR with religious unity. He has even referred to Ukrainian opponents as "evil forces" and Volodymyr Zelensky's government as "antichrist." In short, he has been the spiritual legitimation of the invasion of the Kremlin.
A historian and theologian, Hilarion had a TV show, had written several books, and had met with two popes, Benedict XVI and Francis. He will be replaced by Metropolitan Antoni, 37, who until now was Vicar of the Patriarch and Primate of the Russian Church in Western Europe. From now on the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church has decided that Hilarion will be in charge of supervising the diocese of Budapest and Hungary.
