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On 5 July 2015, the 5th Sunday after Pentecost, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, chairman of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, celebrated the Divine Liturgy at the Church of the “Joy of All the Afflicted” Icon of the Mother of God in Bolshaya Ordynka Street, Moscow.

Concelebrating with the archpastor were Rev. Georgy Zavershinsky, dean of the Sourozh diocese’s parishes in Scotland and Northern Ireland; Rev. Nikolay Evseev, dean of the Munster district of the Sourozh diocese; Hieromonk Ioann (Kopeikin), Vice-Rector of Ss Cyril and Methodius Theological Institute of Postgraduate Studies; and clerics of the church.

After the Litany of Fervent Supplication, Metropolitan Hilarion said a prayer for peace in Ukraine.

During the Divine Service, a prayer for the repose of the soul of His Beatitude Metropolitan Vladimir (Sabodan) of Kiev and All Ukraine was said. His Beatitude Metropolitan Vladimir died on July 5, last year.

“Having become the head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in difficult times, His Beatitude Vladimir was received with love by the Ukrainian people, since he was modest, affable and humble. He could get on easily with all kinds of people and at the same time was a man of prayer and profound spirituality,” Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk said in his archpastoral homily.

As the DECR chairman noted, Metropolitan Vladimir was a zealous advocate for the unity of the Russian Orthodox Church within her canonical borders. “It is for over a thousand years that the one Russian Church has been bearing her witness to the world,” Metropolitan Hilarion continued. “This witness began not in Moscow, or Minsk, or St. Petersburg, but in Kiev, in the Dnieper baptismal font, born in which was the Holy Rus’, thanks to the holy Baptizer of Russia, whose namesake was His Beatitude Metropolitan Vladimir.”

DECR Communication Service