The Moscow Patriarchate’s Metropolitan of Volokolamsk, His Eminence Hilarion, was among the personalities in the vast country honored on Wednesday, during a ceremony at the Grand Kremlin Palace’s Hall of the Order of St. George.
His Eminence was awarded the Order of Alexander Nevsky for his “great contributions”, as the awards statement read, towards the development of international and inter-faith relations.
In his acceptance speech, Hilarion, chairman of the Department of External Church Relations and a permanent member of the Holy Synod of the Patriarchate of Moscow, also referred to the creation of a Russian Church Exarchate on the African continent, something that the Alexandria Patriarchate has decried as non-canonical and as an “intrusion” into its ecclesiastical jurisdiction.