The governing synod of the Russian Orthodox Church’s demoted Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev to parish work following claims of sexual assault and financial irregularities during his time as Church leader in Hungary.
“Holy Synod members draw the attention of Metropolitan Hilarion of Budapest and Hungary to the discrepancy between his way of life and relations with his immediate circle with the image of a monk and clergyman,” it said in a statement. “If the Moscow Patriarchate receives new information about the circumstances of this case, it will ask the Patriarch to resume the work of the commission studying the information.”
Metropolitan Hilarion, 58, was widely seen as a likely successor to Patriarch Kirill while he headed the Church’s powerful external relations department from 2009, but was suddenly reassigned in June 2022 to its small Hungarian diocese, four months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Although the Metropolitan told the TASS news agency he had not “fitted with the current socio-political situation”, some media speculated that his transfer had been coordinated with Russian intelligence to provide the Moscow Patriarchate with a base for influencing Western governments and churches, assisted by Viktor Orbán’s government.
Accusations against the Metropolitan surfaced last July in a lengthy feature by the Latvia-based Russian daily Novaya Gazeta Europa, which said Hilarion had been given a Hungarian passport just three months after arriving in Budapest, enabling him to travel unaffected by international sanctions.
However, it also reported allegations of sexual harassment by a young Japanese-Russian sub-deacon, Georgy Suzuki, who fled to Tokyo last January, taking cash and valuables from Hilarion’s residence, as well as photographs and videos of the Metropolitan’s lavish lifestyle.
Speaking to the RIA Novosti agency after the Synod’s announcement, Hilarion, who studied at Oxford University in 1993-1995 and was friendly with Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis, said he had accepted the decision to reassign him to a parish at Karlovy Vary in the Czech Republic “with humility and gratitude”, and would now try to “correct shortcomings” in his personal life.
He added, however, that “slander, blackmail, threats and falsified evidence” had been used against him by “secret services, foreign agent media, persons wanted internationally, defrocked former clergy and militant atheists”.