NEW YORK: November 30, 2015
The Primate of the Russian Church Abroad Congratulates Archbishop Mark of Berlin and Germany on the 35 th Anniversary of His Episcopal Consecration

Your Eminence, Vladyka Mark of Berlin and Germany,
Vice President of the Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia:

Beloved in Christ Vladyko:

On behalf of the episcopate, clergymen and the Fullness of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, I express our heartfelt congratulations on the thirty-fifth anniversary of your personal Pentecost, the anniversary of your glorious archpastoral service, which has brought joy, guidance and consolation to the souls entrusted to your diocese in Germany!

On this “chosen and holy day,” I lift my prayers of thankfulness to God, beseeching Him to send His mercies and blessings to your many labors, which you perform with humility, strength and boldness, along with good health, spiritual strength and heavenly aid, spiritual flourishing and success in your work and many more years towards the preservation and dissemination of Holy Orthodoxy in the diocese entrusted to you.
I express my genuine fraternal good wishes, humbly asking your holy prayers for me, the unworthy one, and for the entire Russian Church Abroad, that the Lord bolsters us in all our endeavors throughout the world, to sow the seeds of faith among the flock of our Holy and Great Mother, the Russian Orthodox Church!

With love in the Lord,

+ HILARION,
Metropolitan of Eastern America and New York,
First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia

November 16/29, 2015