On 2 July 2003 Mr Igor S. Ivanov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, visited the Cathedral of the Dormition of the Mother of God in Budapest. Mr Ivanov, who was accompanied by the Ambassador of the Russian Federation in the Republic of Hungary Mr V. L. Musatov and a number of Russian and Hungarian officials, was greeted at the entrance by Bishop Hilarion of Vienna and Austria, Representative of the Russian Orthodox Church to the European Institutions and administrator of the Diocese of Budapest and Hungary, and Archbishop Paul of Riazan and Kassimov (formerly of Vienna and Budapest). There followed a short service celebrated by Bishop Hilarion and the clergy of the diocese of Budapest and Hungary. After the service Bishop Hilarion delivered his welcome address to Mr Ivanov (see the English version below). Responding to Bishop Hilarion, Mr Ivanov stressed the importance of close collaboration between Russian diplomacy and the Moscow Patriarchate. As a memory of his visit he offered an icon of St Seraphim of Sarov to the Cathedral of the Dormition of the Mother of God.

Welcome address by Bishop Hilarion of Vienna and Austria to Mr Ivanov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation

Your Excellency, most respected Igor Sergeevich!

May I warmly welcome you to this holy church on behalf of myself, my predecessor archbishop Paul, who is present here today, as well as the clergy and faithful of the Hungarian diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Today is not your first visit to our Cathedral, and we are deeply thankful to you for your heartfelt and sincere attention to this parish. The Eucharistic vessels that you donated to this church during your last visit remind us of our duty to pray for the authorities and people of the Russian Federation just as we pray daily for the authorities and people of Hungary.

We are sincerely thankful to Mr V. L. Musatov, the Ambassador of the Russian Federation in the Republic of Hungary, in whose person we have not only a government official who helps us solve various problems, but also a sympathetic and sensitive leader who worthily represents Russia in this European country.

The Russian Orthodox Church is not only the Church of Russia. Her faithful include also Orthodox believers from the Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova as well as the countries of the Baltic region and Central Asia. Dioceses and parishes of the Russian Church exist also in countries of the European Union and outside of Europe.

The Russian Church unites believers not according to their ethnicity, but according to their faith. Here in Hungary our parishioners are Hungarians, Russians, Greeks, Ukrainians, Moldavians, Georgians and people of many other nationalities. The services in our cathedral are conducted in Hungarian, Greek and Slavonic. Our church is open to all, both to those who were born and raised in Hungary as well as those who have made this country their second home.

The Dormition cathedral was built in the 18th century by the joint efforts of Hungarians, Greeks and Moldo-Wallachians. It was under the jurisdiction of the Serbian Orthodox Church until 1949, when it was accepted into the Russian Church. This change of jurisdiction helped it not only to survive in a difficult and tragic period of official atheism, but also to rise to a new level thanks to His Holiness Patriarch Alexis I and the Holy Synod, who gave their blessing to use the Hungarian language during services. This historical decision predestined the fate of the cathedral and other churches of the Hungarian diocese which, at present, have essentially become the national Orthodox Church of Hungary. Thus, when the Orthodox community had to choose an ecclesiastical jurisdiction in 1991 after the fall of the communist regime, it unanimously decided to remain within the Moscow Patriarchate.

The life of the cathedral community is characterized by its vivacity and fullness. All of its clergy are native Hungarians, and every Sunday the church is filled with hundreds of believers. Sunday school and cathechism classes are held in Hungarian, and a library has been opened that contains a large number of theological and historical books in Hungarian, Greek and Russian. There are also many young people in the church. Favorable political conditions in contemporary Hungary facilitate the flourishing of the Orthodox community, which carries out its service in close contact with the Roman Catholic Church and other Christian confessions.

Unfortunately, during the last few years the cathedral of the Dormition has become the target of unsubstantiated claims from the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Justifying their position by an arbitrary interpretation of the 28th canon of the Council of Chalcedon, which gives the bishop of “New Rome” the right to ordain bishops for the “barbarous lands”, the Patriarchate of Constantinople has filed a lawsuit with the intention of taking away this church, which it never owned, from our Hungarian Orthodox diocese. In doing so they did not take into account the fact that Hungary is by no means a “barbarous land”, but a country with an extremely rich history, where Christianity has been preached over the course of many centuries.

We have no doubt that the Hungarian court will make an objective and just decision based exclusively on facts and documents, and not on unfounded and empty pretensions. We have no doubt that a country readying itself for joining the European Union will not allow Orthodox Hungarians to end up on the street in their own country.

I would like, however, to stress the fact that this matter does not just concern church property and the fate of a single parish which some people are trying to divide. The question is about the future of Orthodoxy here in Hungary.

Today we are faced with two radically different approaches to church life. For the Patriarchate of Constantinople the entire world, with the exception of traditionally Orthodox countries such as Greece and Russia, is seen as a diaspora, the “barbarous lands” for which Orthodoxy is something foreign. Many parishes of this Patriarchate in Europe have an overwhelmingly ethnic character, and services in them are held only in Greek. The Russian Church, on the contrary, believes that each country and people have the right to have their own Orthodox Church in which the faithful can hear the services in their native tongue.

Moreover, we believe that local Churches have the right to become independent and to administer themselves. This is why the Russian metropolia in North America was reorganized as the autocephalous Orthodox Church in America, and the Russian metropolia in Japan – as the autonomous Japanese Orthodox Church. For the same reasons His Holiness the Patriarch Alexis II of Moscow and all Russia proposed three months ago the creation of an autonomous metropolia in Europe, which would lay the foundation for a future Orthodox Church of Western Europe.

The maintaining of Church unity always was and remains one of the top priorities of the Russian Orthodox Church. We regard with pain the attempts to divide this church community and create a spirit of confrontation and opposition. These attempts can only be a stumbling block for believers and cause significant damage to the work of Christian witness in the secular world, which expects from us examples of love and unity, not conflicts and divisions.

We hope that these difficult times for our community will end soon and that it will be able to carry out its mission in this country without hindrance, just as before. Our hope is strengthened by the intercessions of the Most Holy Mother of God, in whose honor this holy church was built.

In conclusion, may I wish you, dear Igor Sergeevich, God’s help in your responsible and difficult work. May the Lord bless your labors, and may the Most Holy Mother of God keep you under Her protection.