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Source: Commonweal By John Chryssavgis Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev) of Volokolamsk has served as chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations since 2009. He is an outspoken critic of the independence granted to the Orthodox Church in Ukraine by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, which—in his frequently bombastic and belligerent statements—he associates with the alleged corruption of the West and the perceived geopolitical dominance of the United States. His reactionary and parochial worldview centers on a denunciation of modern culture and a return to an imagined golden age of Russian Orthodoxy. But has the Russian Patriarchate effectively become a…