Moscow, July 23, 2020
Yesterday, July 22, His Eminence Metropolitan Evlogy of Vladimir, a well-known and influential figure in the Russian Church since the beginning of its revival in the 1980s, reposed in the Lord at the St. Alexei Hospital in Moscow at the age of 83.
He died of an “illness related to his venerable age,” reports the Vladimir Diocese.
“The retired Metropolitan Evlogy (Smirnov) has reposed. He bore many labors: abbot of Danilovsky Monastery in the years of its opening, abbot of Optina also in the years of its opening, and nearly 30 years as the hierarch of the Vladimir Diocese,” His Grace Bishop Savva of Zelenograd, the Deputy Chancellor of the Moscow Patriarchate wrote of him today.
His funeral will be served at the Holy Dormition Cathedral in Vladimir on Saturday, July 25.
May his memory be eternal!
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Met. Evlogy (Yuri Vasilievich Smirnov) was born on January 13, 1937 in Kemerovo in a working-class Christian family.
He entered the Moscow Theological Seminary in 1955 and began to serve as subdeacon to His Holiness Patriarch Alexei I of Moscow. In the spring of 1960, he joined the brotherhood of the Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra, and he was tonsured as a monk with the name Evlogy on March 15, 1965. On March 21, he was ordained as a hierodeacon.
He graduated from the Moscow Theological Academy in 1966 and taught Homiletics and Canon Law at the Seminary-Academy, while bearing various obediences as a monk of the Lavra. He was ordained as a hieromonk in 1967.
In May 1983, Archimandrite Evlogy became the first abbot of the reviving Danilovsky Monastery in Moscow, tasked with restoring the churches from ruins and creating a spiritual and administrative center for the Russian Church within the walls of the monastery, and also to renew the deep veneration of the holy Prince Daniel of Moscow, and to revive monastic prayer at the holy habitation.
In August 1988, he became the first abbot of the newly-reopened Optina Monastery, where he served until becoming the Bishop of Vladimir in November 1990. He was elevated to the rank of Archbishop in 1995, and to Metropolitan in 2013.
For his theological, catechetical, and peacekeeping labors, Met. Vladimir received numerous Church awards not only from the Russian Church, including the Ukrainian and Belarusian Churches, but also from the Churches of Jerusalem and of the Czech Lands and Slovakia.
Met. Evlogy retired in December 2018. The Holy Synod thanked him “for his 30 years of archpastoral care for the Vladimir Diocese, which contributed to the comprehensive development of Church life—an increase in the number of parishes and clergy and the opening of monasteries and theological schools.”
