EDITOR’S NOTE (Nick Stamatakis) For decades Met. Ilarion of Volokolamtsk was known as the “Foreign Minister” of the Moscow Patriarchate. Two years ago, he was suddenly transferred to Hungary to become the Metropolitan of Hungary. We realized something was going on behind the scenes. Now, the truth about his secret gay life has become public and part of an investigation. What is very disturbing is that he was among the most active denouncers of homosexuality in Christianity. If this information is true, it really is damaging for the Metropolitan and the Russian Church.
At the same time, we cannot but underline that the Holy Synod of Moscow, which in our days has become the “Ark” of traditional Orthodoxy and supporter of family values against a degenerate Western culture, immediately suspended him and started an official investigation. Should I remind you of Met. Emmanuel (formerly of France), now of Chalcedon (who is the second in command in Constantinople)? When yours truly revealed that he and his assistant Maximos had repeatedly invited Bulgarian gay escorts into the building of the Metropolis in Paris, Bartholomew, instead of punishing them, promoted them!!! Bartholomew did not have in his hands just “allegations.” He had truly FACTS, part of a French Police Report. Helleniscope repeatedly asked him to call up the Paris Police and demand the official report – he had every right to do it, as the supervising authority. Not only did he not demand the report from the Paris Police, but a few weeks later, he promoted both Emmanuel and Maximos!!
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source – othodoxyindialogue.com
WHEN YOUR CELL ATTENDANT BECOMES YOUR BEDMATE: METROPOLITAN HILARION ALFEYEV’S SECRET GAY LIFE
The present report appeared with a different title yesterday, July 25, at Novaya Gazeta Europe as a translation and revision of its original exposé in Russian on July 5. Orthodoxy in Dialogue’s mandate does not include exposing the sexual sins of hierarchs and priests except when they engage in the same activities that they so virulently denounce as spokesmen of the Church. Our readers will recall that Alfeyev has served as the Moscow Patriarchate’s main anti-LGBTQ voice. (See here, for instance.) Alfeyev repeatedly went on record condemning same-sex love while engaging in non-consensual, assaultive same-sex acts. His global reputation as a theologian and composer is collapsing like a house of cards. Will SVS Press do the right thing and remove his titles from its list?
We should also note, when reading about Alfeyev’s lavish lifestyle, that Orthodox bishops are selected from among the monks and should in principle continue to live in monastic austerity.
Russian Orthodox turmoil
Allegations of sexual harassment against a once high-flying bishop have rocked Russia’s religious establishment to the core
Hilarion Alfeyev addresses the 52nd International Eucharistic Congress in Budapest, Hungary, 6 September 2021.
Photo: EPA-EFE / Noemi Bruzak
The Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church announced the temporary suspension of the metropolitan of Budapest and Hungary from his diocese on Thursday, pending the findings of a commission appointed to study “the situation there”. While the wording of the church statement was deliberately ambiguous, the matter being investigated is almost certainly a series of recent sexual harassment claims against Metropolitan Hilarion.
A staunch defender of so-called “traditional values” known for his ultraconservative approach to church doctrine, Hilarion Alfeyev, a close ally of Russian Orthodox Church head Patriarch Kirill, was revealed by Novaya Gazeta Europe earlier this month to be at the centre of a series of sexual misconduct allegations made by his now 21-year-old former assistant.
Once frequently tipped as a potential successor to Patriarch Kirill, Metropolitan Hilarion was for many years a powerful figure within the Russian Orthodox Church who headed the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department of External Church Relations from 2009–2022, while also maintaining a close relationship with the head [Patriarch Kirill] of the church.
Hilarion has maintained that “sexual orientation is not innate, but develops in early childhood and adolescence” and has advocated the introduction of similar bans on “gay propaganda” in other countries.
Hilarion has for years been a vocal critic of LGBT acceptance in churches around the world, and has publicly criticised other Christian denominations, including the Roman Catholic Church, for allowing the blessing of same-sex partnerships. In 2021, alongside Vladimir Putin and Patriarch Kirill, Alfeyev supported the expansion of Russia’s notorious “gay propaganda” law, which further criminalised the sharing of any material positively depicting LGBT relationships, and which was a milestone in Russia’s continuing assault on queer identities. Hilarion has maintained that “sexual orientation is not innate, but develops in early childhood and adolescence” and has advocated the introduction of similar bans on “gay propaganda” in other countries.
Hilarion’s rise through the ranks of the church over the past two decades had landed him in increasingly powerful positions, until June 2022 when he was suddenly and without explanation appointed the metropolitan of Budapest and Hungary, a clear demotion that saw him relocated to a relative backwater in Russian Orthodox terms. While the circumstances of Hilarion’s reassignment remain uncertain, The Moscow Times reported shortly afterwards that it followed an investigation by a special commission set up on the instructions of Patriarch Kirill into alleged financial misconduct.
Further complicating the metropolitan’s relocation is a leaked image of Hilarion’s Hungarian passport, which, according to its date of issue, was granted just three months after Hilarion’s appointment to lead the Orthodox Church in Hungary. In other words, Hilarion appears to have been granted Hungarian citizenship within a time frame that’s unheard of in any EU country. If the image is authentic, Hilarion’s expedited citizenship must have come as a result of intervention from the highest levels of Hungarian officialdom.
Photo courtesy of George Suzuki
Nonetheless, during what has been described as his “exile” to Hungary, Hilarion has taken on several high-profile roles, including as a liaison between the Russian Orthodox Church and the West, which has seen him meeting with senior officials from the Catholic Church, including the Pope himself. Hilarion has also been active in Hungarian–Russian relations, and according to Radio Free Europe, was involvedin the Russian return of 11 ethnically Hungarian Ukrainian prisoners of war.
Sexual misconduct allegations
Shortly after Alfeyev moved to Hungary, a Russian-Japanese student of Orthodoxy, George Suzuki, was appointed to be his cell-attendant, the Orthodox term for a personal secretary to a high-ranking church official, and moved to Budapest to take up his new position in October 2022. [The position of cell attendant is primarily a legitimate role in Orthodox monastic tradition when a younger monk serves an elder who requires assistance in daily living.]
While Suzuki says he initially lived in a church cell and assisted Hilarion only on church-related matters, he was soon asked to move into Hilarion’s residence to help out with housework.
Hilarion and Suzuki [serving as a subdeacon] together at mass [sic] in Hungary.
Photo: Parish of the Holy Trinity
Suzuki says that in November he accompanied Hilarion to a lavish mansion he owned on the French side of Lake Geneva. While there, Suzuki alleges that the first instance of alleged sexual misconduct took place while he was in bed with a high fever. Suzuki told Novaya Europe that Hilarion nonconsensually stripped him down to his underwear and lay on top of him while he was in bed.
Following the first incident in France, Suzuki says that Hilarion regularly began to get into bed with him, and though this did not lead to sexual intercourse, Hilarion became ever more sexually overt with Suzuki, demanding that he wear no clothes in bed.
When he expressed his discomfort with the metropolitan’s behaviour, Suzuki says that Hilarion began to threaten him.
Suzuki says that he was subjected to intense pressure and coercion by Hilarion, and that the situation soon became untenable. When he expressed his discomfort with the metropolitan’s behaviour, Suzuki says that Hilarion began to threaten him, and Hilarion can be heard responding to his cell-attendant’s complaints in covert recordings made by Suzuki, warning him that nothing would “work out” for him if he left his position in his household, and that he could face excommunication due to the metropolitan’s powerful position within the church.
In another particularly graphic recording, Hilarion forbids Suzuki from wearing pyjamas to bed, telling him he wants to “feel him with his skin” and “lay down in bed” with him “like a father”.
Despite his attempts to resist, Suzuki says that the metropolitan’s assaults continued.
Alfeyev has called the sexual misconduct claims “groundless” and said he plans to sue Suzuki for defamation. Though he has not denied the authenticity of the covert recordings made by Suzuki, Alfeyev has categorically denied having had sexual intercourse with his cell-attendant. He has also said that he wouldn’t be commenting further on the claims as anything he says “could harm the investigation”.
A lavish lifestyle
Hilarion leads a luxurious lifestyle, according to Suzuki, who described the metropolitan’s frequent stays on lavish yachts and skiing trips to expensive resorts. Suzuki also provided Novaya Europe with documents detailing Hilarion’s purchase of a €1.9 million mansion in Budapest that boasts 14 rooms, a swimming pool, a private gym, a wine cellar and a six-car parking garage.
Photos courtesy of George Suzuki
In one of Suzuki’s covert recordings, Hilarion can be heard describing how he plans to use funds intended for building a new church for his own purposes. Suzuki named several prominent Russian businessmen under sanctions as regular donors to the church, including Dmitry Pumpyansky, God Nisanov, Petr Aven and Valery Kogan all as possible sponsors.
Hilarion does not deny that he owns expensive property in Hungary, explaining instead that the “royalties” he receives from his books and films help support his lifestyle. He has also denied that donor money had ever been used to fund real estate purchases and insisted that the new church would eventually be constructed.
Escape, theft and bribery
n January, Suzuki says he decided to escape, and, having convinced Alfeyev that he had to travel to Budapest to take a blood test, he left the parish and, shortly after, the country, returning to Japan.
By his own admission, before leaving Alfeyev’s residence, Suzuki stole various watches as well as cash belonging to Hilarion, worth a total of approximately €30,000, believing that the items would protect him from his former employer. Once he arrived in Japan, Suzuki reported his theft to the Japanese Embassy in Budapest, despite which a criminal case was brought against him in Hungary.
Screenshot from Hungary’s wanted database
Following Suzuki’s departure, Alfeyev sent him multiple emails apologising for his conduct, while also negotiating with Suzuki’s family to buy his silence. In one email with the subject line “Forgiveness”, Hilarion writes that the money Suzuki stole could be seen as a token of his “sincere regret for all the mistakes made”.
According to Alfeyev, however, the Suzuki family began to blackmail him once Suzuki’s mother Veronika became involved in the negotiations. “The woman saw that I had what she thought was a lot of money and decided that she needed to take advantage of it,” Hilarion said. Eventually, Suzuki’s mother rejected Hilarion’s offers on the grounds that they were “insufficient”, though she subsequently told Novaya Europe that she had only asked for the money to pay for the therapy needed by her son after his ordeal.
The Hungarian authorities are still investigating the theft from the Hungarian Diocese and Suzuki is now wanted for theft. Since then, however, Alfeyev has made a number of additional allegations against Suzuki, including, in one email he wrote to him, that he possessed child pornography.
Suzuki adamantly denied the child pornography allegation when he spoke to Novaya Europe, and stressed that he stole from and covertly filmed Alfeyev only to ensure his own safety. While he admitted to searching for pornography online and signing up for gay dating sites, he points out that his actions were not illegal, even if they did go against Orthodox doctrine.
Photos courtesy of George Suzuki
Support from the Church
“The allegations of sexual abuse made by Suzuki are so incoherent and unconvincing that it is difficult to believe them,” Archpriest Nikolay Kim, the spokesperson for the Budapest and Hungarian diocese of the Moscow Patriarchate, told state-owned Russian news agency TASS when approached for comment on the accusations.
Kim went on to allege that Veronika Suzuki had attempted to use the “illegally” recorded conversations between her son and Alfeyev to extort €384,000 from the metropolitan, adding that the authenticity of the recordings could only be proved “in court”.
Priests, archpriests and deacons who make up the clergy of the Hungarian diocese signed an open letter in support of Alfeyev, praising what they called his “purity of life and high moral character”
On 10 July, the 15 priests, archpriests and deacons who make up the clergy of the Hungarian diocese signed an open letter in support of Alfeyev, praising what they called his “purity of life and high moral character” and urging Hungary’s Orthodox community and the wider public to disregard Suzuki’s accusations.
Earlier this month, state-owned Russian news agency RIA Novosti published an interview with Hilarion in which he said that Suzuki was being investigated for theft, document forgery, illegally accessing and distributing private data, and possession of child pornography, and added that Suzuki’s mother was now also being investigated for extortion.
“Six months after the theft and escape, it suddenly turns out that the perpetrator was the victim. Why didn’t he immediately contact the police if he was harassed? Why did he wait six months? And why was it necessary to steal?” Alfeyev asked.
Global implications
According to Sergey Chapnin, a religious scholar at Fordham University in upstate New York and a former employee of the Moscow Patriarchate, the gravity of the accusations against Alfeyev “cannot be overstated” and had “reverberated through the Orthodox community, both in Russia and internationally”.
“Regrettably, I had to affirm repeatedly that the allegations are indeed credible,” Chapnin told Novaya Europe, adding that his “awareness of the situation long preceded” Novaya Europe’s original investigation into the sexual misconduct claims, adding that he could “attest to their accuracy”.
Photo courtesy of George Suzuki
Inga Leonova, the editor-in-chief of The Wheel, a well-known academic and cultural journal on Russian Orthodoxy, described the Alfeyev case as “a classic story”: a Church leader purports to lead a conservative, clean-cut life but behaves very differently behind closed doors.
The fact that Alfeyev had long been a “spokesperson for the patriarch[ate] about the sexual licentiousness of the West” was “disgusting”, Leonova said, nevertheless adding that “Suzuki’s decision to eventually go public” was probably due to the failure of his attempts to blackmail Hilarion.
“There is a lot of don’t-ask-don’t-tell in the Russian church, meaning that everyone who is in the milieu is always trading stories about the sexual proclivities of the hierarchs,” Leonova told Novaya Europe.
Both Leonova and Chapnin said sexual misconduct within the Russian Orthodox Church is widespread and well-known. However, accusations of sexual harassment are rarely ever investigated and pressure from powerful Church officials may prevent victims from coming forward.
“There is a lot of don’t-ask-don’t-tell in the Russian church, meaning that everyone who is in the milieu is always trading stories about the sexual proclivities of the hierarchs,” Leonova told Novaya Europe.
“I would say that the situation is probably even more dire than it was in the Catholic Church before the Spotlight investigation because everybody talks, nobody investigates, nobody ever goes on record, and no one ever comes forward with accusations because there is nowhere to go.”
Just devastating news 📰…
but grateful as always to Helleniscope journalists who expose the pathetic truth …
It’s bad enough in GOA + this stuff is why I never got sold on switching churches as if the devil isn’t everywhere?
But the wonderful news is:📰
*The Truth Shall Set You Free!
What sad news and what difference to Phanar and this is the tip d of a Russian ice burg I am sure.
How can I ever defend the church when this is all we see.? It’s all its secular critics claim .
Serbia has a similar scandal
But what shocks me the most ( I mean the sex bit is just so sad and desparate and deeply hypocritical.) is the mega wealthy life style from this so called monk as from
so many so called monks today. The stables need clearing out now!! But who will do it. The active laity are so passive to put up with anything.
Sorry to say but there are a lot of problems with this story here. First of all, Novaya Europa is a staunchly opposition oriented news source. In other words they publish anything and everything that is anti-Putin and also anti-Russian Orthodox Church, they seek out and amplify scandal. Sergei Chapnin is another writer who also regularly publishes gossip about the Russian Orthodox church, all in support of the pro-Ukraine agenda.
Second, this Suzuki’s allegations are quite absurd. For him to let a naked man lie down on him? I don’t care how sick or not you are, unless you are in a hospital serious situation you’d certainly resist. And then these other repeated attempts at sexual assault… this is a grown man who can simply walk out of the situation. It’s not like he was being held a hostage.
I have known of situations of sexual assault by clergy on acolytes. If the matter concerns young adults, which Suzuki is, they are very likely to resist and walk away from such a situation. One might ask Suzuki why did he stick around so long when he was free to leave? Was it money? Perhaps it was, but in the sense that Suzuki wanted to get some sort of material he could then use for blackmail purposes.
The church has to conduct an investigation in any case, but I think that going off of the sources you have here, I’d be very careful jumping to such conclusions based on what we have so far.
I hope you are right. But his removal two years ago from his very high position in Moscow proved that something was very wrong…
I agree 100 % with GeogeS.. I mean everything! I mean like George .. I’ll await full evidence ..if it exists…
The removal of Met. Hilarion two years ago was due to a political snafu: he was careless in his language regarding the Ukrainian Orthodox Church when the latter in wake of the political situation made the statement that it is ‘entirely independent’ of the Moscow Patriarchate. He went on the record to state that nothing had changed and the bishops were pretty upset at him for it. Perhaps in the eyes of Patriarch Kirill Met. Hilarion was not a good man to have on such a post during war time.
As far as having expensive residences are concerned, we need to understand that bishops that hold diplomatic roles in the church can’t greet major political actors in a crummy studio apartment somewhere. I once had the honor to be part of a delegation invited to Pat. Alexei II’s residence in Peredelkino, and he made clear that this is where he received international guests on the level of heads of state. It was truly a marvelous residence with a staff, and it made me feel good that foreign visitors were greeted in such an environment.
Granted, we have the example of the late Patriarch Pavle of Serbia who took public transportation, but I assure you even he didn’t sleep in a studio apartment somewhere in a crummy part of Belgrade.
I don’t claim to know everything about Met. Hilarion, but it’s important to first carefully ask ‘cui bono’ in such instances. It is quite clear that when it concerns Russian Orthodox clergy of significant standing, there is a bounty on their head by the mainstream transatlantic establishment that many are eager to claim if given the chance. That doesn’t automatically make them immune from error, of course. But it’s a very important factor to consider, especially with sources like Novaya Europa, Chapnin et all.
YUCK stuff like this
why church is a joke
Alfeyev is suspended rightly
but Emanuella, Makarios &
Elpidoforos still living off the golden hog!!
Holy cow embarrassing for Russian Church & Putin & can’t believe this Metr. Hilarion owns a mansion on Lake Geneva??
recall Rod Dreher is friends with interviewed thi Hierarch must be freaked out
Rod Dreher is divorced since 2022 and now lives in Hungary and is close to Metropolitan Hilarion. He has never come out publicly as a homosexual, but he often refers to his “friend” who struggles with homosexuality. May God help him.
There are a lot of things that are bothering me with this article and part of it is where it was sourced from. One just needs to take a look into the website orthodoxyindialogue and will realize that the person who runs it has obviously an axe to grind. The amount of material in there pushing progressivism and all such nonsense against the Church is amazing and probably comparable only to the professors at Fordham. Nevertheless, if it is true, then he must defrocked and judged by the canons of the Church. Still though, I am extremely skeptical where this is coming from.
Lykourgos, “Orthodoxy in Dialogue” is a sickening cesspool, run by a defrocked priest. I’m not saying that the story isn’t true, but I’d take things with a grain of salt for the time being, until there is really proof!
Here is Rod Dreher’s post:
https://roddreher.substack.com/p/scandal-time-again
Κ. Σταματάκη ευχαριστώ για την άριστη ενημέρωση. Ασχοληθήκατε με τον Ιλαρίων του Πατριαρχείου Μόσχας. Με ένα φαιδρό υποκείμενο. Όμως, αυτό που ίσως δεν γνωρίζετε είναι ότι ο Ιλαρίων είναι κολλητός του Ελπιδοφόρου στην Αμερική. Μαζί εργάζονται, ο ένας για να ρίξει τον Πατριάρχη Κύριλλο και να γίνει αυτός, και ο Ελπιδοφόρος, επιδιώκει να ρίξει τον Βαρθολομαιο για να γίνει οικουμενικός. Αυτά που σας γράφω δεν είναι ούτε σχόλια ούτε κουτσομπολιά. Γεγονότα. Και οι δυο φίδια στον κόρφο των πατριαρχών τους. Ο Κύριλος τον κατάλαβε, ο Βαρθολομαιος κοιμάται. Επιδιώκει να τον ρίξει. Αυτά προς το παρόν. Ευχαριστώ που με ακούσατε.
Όσον αφορά τος σχέσεις των δυο ΣΑΤΑΝΑΣ Ν, ρωτήστε διάφορους στην Θεσσαλονίκη να σας πουν και σε ποιες ταβέρνες και κέντρα συναντούνται.