Moscow, January 27, 2020
Photo: gazeta.ru
Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin unexpectedly reposed in the Lord on Sunday, January 26 on the territory of his parish, not long after having celebrated the Divine Liturgy and having communed of the precious Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, reports the site of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Fr. Vsevolod, widely known as the former Deputy Chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Synodal Department for External Church Relations and former Chairman of the Synodal Department for Church-Society Relations, was two months shy of his 52nd birthday.
“Everything happened around 4:30. Fr. Vsevolod was sitting on a bench near his church when he suddenly became ill, he fell, and 15 minutes later an ambulance arrived and pronounced him dead,” a parishioner of the Church of St. Theodore the Studite told Interfax.
Fr. Vsevolod’s parishioners and Moscow clergy gathered for prayer over Fr. Vsevolod’s body, outside the church on the site where he reposed in the Lord.
Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia expressed his condolences on the death of Fr. Vsevolod, saying, “May the Lord forgive the reposed for his transgressions both voluntary and involuntary and make his memory to be eternal.”
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Fr. Vsevolod was born on March 31, 1968 in Moscow. He graduated from the Moscow Theological Seminary in 1990 and the Theological Academy in 1994.
He was ordained as a deacon on April 21, 1991 and as a priest on January 7, 1992.
From 1985, he was a member of the Publishing Department, and from 1990—the Department for External Church Relations (DECR), serving as Deputy Chairman from 2001 to 2009.
In 1999, he was elevated to the rank of archpriest.
He served as Chairman of the Synodal Department for Church-Society Relations from 2009 to 2015.
He also served as Chairman Of the Expert Council on Economics and Ethics under the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, and Deputy Head of the World Russian People’s Council. He was a member of the Synodal Biblical and Theological Commission, and was author and host of several radio and television programs. He was also a member of the Council for Interaction with Religious Associations under the President of Russia.
