On May 5, the Chairman of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, who was in Hungary with a blessing of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, visited Szentendre town, where he met with the head of the local diocese of the Serbian Orthodox Church headed by Bishop Lukijan of Budim
The other day the news have become known about two events having a direct bearing on the church life of the Orthodox faithful in Lithuania: the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church has set up a commission for considering a change to be made in the status of the Diocese of Vilnius and Lithuania; in addition, it has become known that the authorities of that country submitted a proposal to the Patriarch of Constantinople to accept into his jurisdiction the clergy who would be ready to split off.
On February 16, a meeting of the DECR vice-chairman, Archimandrite Philaret (Bulekov), with a delegation of the Druze community in Israel took place at the lesser hall of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate.
On February 1, Patriarchal Exarch for Africa Metropolitan Leonid of Klin visited the embassy of the Arab Republic of Egypt to meet with Egypt’s Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador to Russia H. E. Ali Baha Eldin Elnaggari.
On January 24, with the blessing of Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, chairman of the Department for External Church Relations, Hieromonk Stefan (Igumnov), DECR secretary for inter-Christian relations, took part in the business forum “Russia-Ethiopia-Djibouti: Prospects for Business Development” held at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation.