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"God’s grace and Your Holiness’ genuine commitment has made Your first year as Spiritual Head of the Russian Orthodox Church a blessed and fruitful period, a year of great achievements in all fields of life of the Russian Orthodox Church," wrote WCC general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit in a letter to Patriarch Kyrill of Moscow and All Russia on 1 February.
Before Kyrill was enthroned as patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church on 1 February 2008, he had headed the external relations department of the world's largest Orthodox church for almost 20 years. He also served as permanent representative of the Moscow Patriarchate to the WCC in the 1970s and as member of the WCC Executive and Central Committees - the Council's governing bodies in the years between its assemblies - from 1975 to 1998.
During the Divine Liturgy on the occasion of the anniversary, the patriarch has elevated the current chairman of the church's external relations department Dr Hilarion Alfeyev of Volokolamsk to the rank of metropolitan.
"I am very glad that such a significant honour has been given to a great hierarch and theologian of the Russian Orthodox Church, one who is deeply involved also in the ecumenical movement, being a member of both the WCC Central Committee and WCC Executive Committee," Tveit wrote in a separate letter to Metropolitan Hilarion the same day.
Full text of the letter to Patriarch Kyrill of Moscow and All Russia
Full text of the letter to Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk