Guests from Kosovo and Metohija visit the DECR

On 25 December 2018, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations (DECR) met with Bishop Teodosije of Raška-Prizren, Serbian Orthodox Church, and hieromonk Isidor (Jagodić), who have arrived as pilgrims to venerate the holy sites of the Russian Orthodox Church.

They were joined at the meeting, which took place at the DECR premises, by the DECR vice-chairman Archpriest Nikolai Balashov and Mr. Andrei Khoshev, a DECR staff member.

Discussed at the meeting, which was held at warm atmosphere of fraternal love and mutual understanding, were the meaning of Kosovo and Metohija for Orthodoxy in Serbia and Serbian people and the current situation in the country.

Bishop Teodosije expressed support to the suffering and persecuted canonical Orthodox in Ukraine. He told the DECR chairman about the decision taken unanimously by the participants in the Episcopal Council of the Serbian Orthodox Church hold on 6-7 November 2018 not to recognize the leaders and followers of the Ukrainian schism taken into jurisdiction of Constantinople and to renounce Eucharistic communion with them.

The guests from Kosovo and Metohija visited Pokrovsky Convent, Danilov Monastery, Cathedral of the Epiphany in Yelokhovo where they venerated the relics of St. Alexius of Moscow and prayed at the tomb of the late Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia, and St. Nicholas church in Klenniky where the relics of St. Alexius Mechev are resting.