He was one of the best-known faces of Russian Orthodoxy. Following the conclusions of an investigation into “the inconsistency of the nature of his relationships with his immediate environment and his life with the image of a monk and a clergyman”, Metropolitan Hilarion of Budapest and Hungary was relieved of his duties as bishop on Friday, December 27. If the synod of the Russian Orthodox Church (EOR) at the origin of this decision reserves the possibility of reopening its file – in the event that new elements are brought to its attention – the latter is retired in the church in Karlovy Vary (Czech Republic).
The matter retains gray areas. During a synod organized on July 25 in Moscow under the aegis of Patriarch Kirill, Metropolitan Hilarion had already been temporarily suspended from his functions. A month earlier, an article in the reputable Russian opposition newspaper Novaïa Gazeta – now in exile in Riga (Latvia) – accused him of alleged acts of sexual harassment against a young Russian-Japanese intern at the Russian Orthodox cathedral in Budapest, Georgy Suzuki, who has since returned to live in Japan. The latter had provided various elements (recordings, fragments of correspondence, photos, etc.) showing inappropriate physical contact, and acts of psychological intimidation, on the part of Hilarion.
A “global conspiracy”
Serious accusations, which the senior religious leader – also implicated for his luxurious lifestyle – has always denied. In an interview broadcast on October 18 on YouTube, the fifty-year-old said: “having made many enemies” throughout his ecclesiastical career and claimed to be the victim of a global conspiracy. “Now is the time for the Church to protect me from a smear campaign that has brought together internationally wanted people, media agents, disbarred former clergy, members of extremist associations and experts who have left Russia and who specialize in denigrating the Russian Church”he insisted in front of the camera.
In mid-October, a commission of inquiry – mandated this summer by Moscow, officially to shed light on “the situation in the diocese of Budapest and Hungary” – initially established his innocence, on the grounds that the documents brandished by the young Suzuki would have been falsified, and that the latter would have stolen belongings from the religious leader. “This decision of the Synod to finally force him into a golden exile in Europe marks a form of compromise. He is sidelined, but without being reduced to a secular state… Within the Moscow Patriarchate, we know that he could start revealing things if he was mistreated too much. says a good expert on the subject.
A brilliant intellectual
How can we still understand this halt in the meteoric rise of the man who was long considered Kirill’s “dauphin”? Born in 1966 in Moscow into a family of intellectuals, Grigori Alfeyev, his real name, had the predisposition to rub shoulders with the heights of Russian Orthodoxy. “He was the only son of a mother who always said of him that he would end up a patriarch. It was a kind of “child prodigy” “, as there were many at that time in the USSR”traces Antoine Nivière, professor of Russian civilization at the University of Lorraine.
A prodigy pianist, the man who was baptized at the age of 11 – in secret, like so many of his co-religionists during the Soviet era – studied at the Gnessin Conservatory in Moscow. Shortly after his twenties, he decided to become a monk, adopting the name Hilarion. Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Oxford, passed through the benches of the Saint-Serge Institute in Paris, he then accumulated prestigious diplomas, occupying increasingly important positions within the Patriarchate of Moscow. In 2002, at just 36 years old, Hilarion was ordained a bishop. Seven years later, he became one of the youngest metropolitans in the history of the Russian Orthodox Church (EOR).
After having been sent to the United Kingdom, Austria and Belgium, Hilarion then occupied between 2009 and 2022 a highly strategic position, as president of the Department of External Ecclesiastical Relations of the EOR – the equivalent, therefore, of the “ Minister of Foreign Affairs” of Kirill. There, this polyglot distinguished himself especially in terms of ecumenism. “Christian unity is not a utopia”, he liked to repeat, while firmly defending the positions of his Church, in increasingly open conflict with the Patriarchate of Constantinople.
“More moderate than Kirill on certain subjects, he was considered to be a more “presentable” face of the EOR internationally: he was thus able to meet Pope Francis, the Anglican primate Justin Welby, the European authorities… He did not had no less become, in recent years, a true ideologue of the Patriarchy”regrets the specialist in orthodoxy Jean-François Colosimo, who was on his thesis jury at Saint-Serge. In February 2016, in particular, Hilarion was one of the behind-the-scenes architects of the historic meeting, in Cuba, of Francis with Kirill. A first since the schism of 1054. With Rome, Hilarion advocated a rapprochement on the basis of common values: defense of Christianity in secularized societies, valorization of the traditional family – without advancing on the ground of doctrinal unification.
A “bridge” with modernity
A prolific author and famous composer of sacred music, this specialist in patristics has once again managed to embody a bridge between the Orthodox tradition and the modern world. Comfortable with the media and new technologies, from 2009 until his withdrawal in 2022 he hosted the program “The Church and the World” on the television channel Vesti (now Rossiya-24). In this thirty-minute program, followed by millions of people, Hilarion presented the position of the Moscow Patriarchate on major current or social issues.
Gray areas remain regarding its connection with the Kremlin. In June 2021, President Vladimir Putin had these words, when presenting him with the State Prize of the Russian Federation: “Metropolitan Hilarion is a man of great value, (who) continues the tradition of the Russian Enlightenment, combining service to the Church with luminous creative activity.” “But he is much less subservient to Putin than is Kirill,” dismisses a Russian source. “He was able to better maintain his free-spirited temperament by maintaining a working relationship with political representatives”continues Antoine Nivière – again citing an emblematic episode, when Hilarion, stationed in Vilnius (Lithuania) at the dawn of the 1990s, took a stand against the repression of demonstrators by the KGB.
Did his lack of support for Putin’s line, particularly on the offensive front in Ukraine, precipitate his appointment in Hungary – a sort of “shelving” as some observers perceived it? Had he, on the contrary, been sent there for an influence operation in the European Union with President Viktor Orbán, as others claim? Several questions remain open. Notably, the Holy Synod in any case did not express, as is usually customary, its “gratitude” for Hilarion’s mandate in Hungary. The undeniable sign, for a Moscow source, “that he really embarrassed the EOR”.