NEW YORK: June 24, 2019
Metropolitan Hilarion of Eastern America and New York sends namesday greetings to His Beatitude Metropolitan Onouphry of Kiev and All Ukraine

03/06/19

To His Beatitude Metropolitan Onouphry
of Kiev and All Ukraine

Your Beatitude, Blessed Vladyka!

Please accept my most heartfelt greetings on your namesday and the celebration of your 75th birthday.

On this holiday, so significant not only for you but for the entire Orthodox Church, I prayerfully wish you firm health, boldness of spirit, many fruitful years, perpetual spiritual joy and the blessed aid of God in all your good works to the glory of God and the benefit of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the sole Church recognized by all the Local Churches, the canonical Church of Christ on the territory of Ukraine.

As we embark upon a meeting of the Synod of Bishops, which will coincide with the 25th anniversary of the glorification of our father, St John of Shanghai and San Francisco the Miracle-worker, we will surround the crypt of the uncorrupt relics of the saint, upon which we will lay the Kursk-Root Icon of the Mother of God "of the Sign," and we shall fervently pray for you, your good and devoted assistants, the eminent archpastors, clergymen, monastics and laity of the suffering Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Standing before these holy relics, we will fraternally declare that our thoughts and prayers are with you and with the entire Ukrainian Orthodox Church! From here we send you and all of your fellow-travelers in the faith a deep bow for your witness and ascetic labors in preserving and increasing the the ecclesio-canonical, spiritual-moral and cultural-historical values of our Holy Orthodoxy on the land where St John, the great archpastor of the Russian diaspora, was born. We are filled with joy that you, just as was our heavenly patron, and was your own heavenly patron, St Onouphry the Great, are an example and shining star showing the way through these difficult times to the people of the Church today.

May the All-merciful Lord increase His blessed mercies upon Your Beatitude and all those who worship Him for many good years ahead!

Beseeching your holy prayers, I remain with love in the Lord,

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