HILARION OF VOLOKOLAMSK

The Life in Christ

Grigoriy Valerievich Alfeyev was born in Moscow in 1966. In 1986 he graduated at the Moscow State Conservatoire. In 1987 he entered the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Vilnius. In 1989 graduated from the Moscow Theological Seminary and in 1991 from the Moscow Theological Academy, and served as a parish priest in Lithuania.

From 1991 to 1993 he taught homiletics, dogmatic theology, New Testament studies and Byzantine Greek at the Moscow Theological Academy, St Tikhon’s Theological Institute and St John the Theologian’s Orthodox University.

From 1993 to 1995 he studied at the University of Oxford (UK) under the supervision of Bishop Kallistos Ware. 

From 1995 to 2001 Alfeyev served as Secretary for Inter-Christian Affairs of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate. In 2002 he was consecrated bishop and nominated as Head of the Representation of the Russian Orthodox Church to the European Institutions in Brussels.

In 2003 he was appointed Bishop of Vienna and Austria, administrator of the Diocese of Budapest and Hungary, in addition to his position in Brussels.

In 2009 he was appointed the Bishop of Volokolamsk, the Vicar to the Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia, the chairman of the Department of the External Church Relations.