Russia summons Czech envoy over Orthodox cleric’s drug arrest

In this picture made available by Vatican Media Saturday, April 29, 2023 Pope Francis, left, meets the Russian Orthodox Church's representative in Hungary, Metropolitan Hilarion at the Holy See's embassy in Budapest. (Vatican Media via AP)

Russia on Tuesday said it had summoned the Czech Republic’s charge d’affaires, a day after the central European country announced it had detained an influential Orthodox cleric for allegedly possessing suspicious substances.

Hilarion, who held a top position in the Russian Orthodox Church until 2022, was detained on a highway between the spa town Karlovy Vary and Prague on Sunday.

He was later released from police custody without charge, his representatives said on social media, adding that the investigation was still ongoing.

Moscow’s foreign ministry said it had expressed a “strong protest” to Czech diplomat Jan Ondrejka.

“The Russian side urgently demands the unconditional and immediate release of Bishop Hilarion,” it said, accusing Prague of “persecuting” Orthodox clerics.

The ministry said the charges of “manufacturing and trafficking narcotic drugs” were “absurd and groundless”.

Czech police found four containers of a “white substance” in the boot of Hilarion’s car, the cleric’s representatives said in a social media statement.

The cleric denied having “any connection to the illegal trafficking of narcotic substances”, the statement said.

Hilarion’s secular name is Grigory Alfeyev.

He led the foreign relations department of the Russian Orthodox Church for 13 years and was even tipped as a potential successor to Patriarch Kirill, before being unexpectedly sent to lead the Hungarian diocese shortly after the Ukraine war began.

He now serves as a priest in an Orthodox church in Karlovy Vary, a resort town once popular with Russian tourists and emigres.