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Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, Chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations, sent his condolences over death of Bishop Daniel of Erie to the President of the Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, Metropolitan Hilarion of Eastern America and New York. The text is given below.

Your Eminence:

It is with profound and sincere grief that I express to you, brothers archpastors, clerics, and laymen my heartfelt condolences over the demise of His Grace Bishop Daniel of Erie, Vicar of the President of the Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad for the service of Old Believers.

Bishop Daniel’s selfless life filled with work and genuine love for Christ and brothers in faith has ended. He had to endure many sorrows and trials in his life, but he had always kept faith in spiritual revival of the Russian people, and his words had always been imbued with love of Russia, which he visited at the time when he had to hide his being in holy orders.

Bishop Daniel’s heart grieved for frequent impossibility to fulfill a major commandment of Church “that they may all be one” (Jn. 17:21). He concentrated his spiritual power on the healing of church divisions. As a result of his spiritual endeavours, hundreds of the zealots of ancient Russian liturgical rites had not succumbed into temptation of schism and are abiding in the fold of the Mother Church. The prayers for the deceased will be offered up in all Old Believer parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church where one can meet many of his disciples and followers.

We have lost a senior archpastor who by his education and spirituality belonged to the generation that is leaving us forever. Bishop Daniel was not only a zealous servant of God, but also a poet, linguist, translator from classical languages, icon painter, and connoisseur of architecture, Old Russian liturgy and Old Russian music. He was a man who dedicated all his talents to the Lord.

May the Lord rest the soul of the late-lamented Bishop Daniel “in the mansions of the righteous, where there is neither sickness, nor sorrow, nor signing, but life everlasting.”

/+ Hilarion/

Metropolitan of Volokolamsk

Chairman of Department for External Church Relations

Moscow Patriarchate

Chairman of the Commission for Old Believer parishes and relations with Old Belief