NEW YORK: October 27, 2016
Metropolitan Hilarion of Eastern America and New York Sends Greetings on the 100th Anniversary of Ekaterinburg Theological Seminary

To His Eminence Metropolitan Kirill
of Ekaterinburg and Verkhotursk:
Your Eminence, Vladyko,

Dear in the Lord professors, teachers and students of Ekaterinburg Theological Seminary:

On behalf of the Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, I send my heartfelt greetings on the 100 th anniversary of the wonderful vineyard of theology that graces your Ural region, and we prayerfully wish that Divine mercies and blessings always accompany your efforts to the glory of God!

Future pastors must never forget the great calling of the successors of righteous St Simeon of Verkhotursk, the Holy Royal Passion-bearers, other saints and ascetics who shone in the territory of today’s Ekaterinburg Metropoliate, who on the path of profound humility and love became temples of the Holy Spirit. Among them is Archbishop Kliment (Perestyuk), former abbot of Kazan Icon of the Mother of God Monastery, who taught theology at the Harbin Diocese of the Russian Church Abroad, but who would return to his Homeland during the Cultural Revolution in China. He is now buried at St John the Forerunner Church. The pious preservation of his memory, as well as the veneration of other saints of the Ural region, strengthens the fraternal bonds between the clergymen and laity of the Russian Church Abroad and of the Ekaterinburg Metropoliate.

A great many people are now drawn to your spiritual school who desire to see the life of its grace-filled legacy and come into contact with it. Seeing how valuable before God and mankind is the ideal of perfection and holiness, the students, like their heavenly patrons, must establish their own internal temple and take care that it is adorned with the lofty and bright Christian virtues, and filled with the treasures of faith and chastity, which are to enrich all who seek and desire in their pastoral guidance the eternal and incorrupt blessings of the Kingdom of God.

In the path chosen by both teachers and students, in the striving to the holy goal, we wish you all Divine blessings and successes, which are the true foundations of the well-being of the Ekaterinburg Theological Seminary and its salvific service to mankind!

Asking your holy prayers, with love in the Lord,

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

+NICHOLAS,
Bishop of Manhattan,
Deputy Secretary of the Synod of Bishops.