Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, has assigned Metropolitan Hilarion — recently suspected of drug smuggling in the Czech Republic — to the Argentine and South American Diocese.
Hilarion will serve in Brazil at the Church of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul in Santa Rosa and at the Church of the Holy Apostle and Evangelist John the Theologian in Campinas das Missões.
Hilarion previously served at an Orthodox church in Karlovy Vary, in western Czechia. In late May, he returned to Russia after being detained on suspicion of involvement in drug smuggling.
On May 24, Czech law enforcement stopped the car Hilarion was traveling in and found four small containers with a white substance in the trunk. Police took him into police custody but released him two days later without charges.
Hilarion (born Grigory Alfeyev) is a former head of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations and a former member of the Holy Synod, the Russian Orthodox Church’s supreme governing body. In 2022, he was appointed Metropolitan of Budapest and Hungary. Two years later, his former aide, Georgy Suzuki, accused him of sexual harassment, after which Hilarion was reassigned to serve as an ordinary priest in Karlovy Vary.
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