Bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church, President of the Department for External Relations of the Patriarchate of Moscow and permanent member of the Holy Synod; President of the Synodal Biblical and Theological Commission, Dean of the Ecclesiastical post-graduate Institute Saints Cyril and Methodius, who held the church of the icon of the “Mother of God the joy of all the afflicted” in Moscow.
Theologian, expert in patrology, church historian, composer.
In 1987 he took the monastic vows and was ordained a priest. He has exercised the ministry in Lithuania and Moscow. He studied at the Theological Academy in Moscow and graduated from Oxford University. He taught in theological institutes of the Russian Orthodox Church and worked at the Department for External Relations of the Patriarchate of Moscow. In 2002 he was consecrated bishop, in 2009 appointed archbishop, and metropolitan in 2010.
He received his Ph.D. in philosophy at Oxford, theology at the San Sergio Institute in Paris, and was a professor at the Theological Academy of Moscow and at the University of Freiburg (Switzerland). He graduated honoris causa at the Theological Academies in St. Petersburg and Minsk, Russian Social University, at the Theology Faculty of the University of Catalonia, at the University of Lugano and Prešov (Slovakia). Honorary Professor of the Russian Christian Humanities Academy. Actual member of the Russian Academy of Literature. Member of the Union of Russian Composers.
Author of more than 900 publications including patristic monographs, dogmatic theology and Church history, as well as translation of works by the Fathers from the Greek and the Syriac. Her books are translated into 18 languages. In Italy, the publication of his “Ortodossia” opera (Dehonian) is being completed, of which four volumes have already been released and the fifth is in preparation; it has just released, by the same publisher, its volume on the icon.