Head of the House of Romanoff, Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna, has sent her Condolences on the Death of the First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad (ROCA), Metropolitan Laurus

From the Head of the Russian Imperial House 

To His Eminence, Archbishop Hilarion of Australia and New Zealand 

Your Eminence!

It was with enormous sadness that I received the news of the death of the First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, His Eminence Metropolitan Laurus of Eastern America and New York. I want to express to you and to all members of the Synod of Bishops my sincere condolences, on behalf of my august mother, Grand Duchess Leonida Georgievna, and my son and heir, Grand Duke Georgii Mikhailovich. We pray that the Lord will give rest in His Kingdom to the blessed-reposed First Hierarch, and that his prayers on all our behalf will find hearing before the heavenly Throne of Our Lord.

The crowning achievement of the newly reposed Metropolitan Laurus was his efforts to bring about the unification of the Russian Orthodox Church, which was accomplished with the signing of the Act of Restoration of the Ecclesiological and Canonical Unity of the Moscow Patriarchate and the Church Abroad, on the Feast of the Lord’s Ascension last year. Along the path to this event, so long-awaited by the faithful of the Russian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Laurus had to suffer many trials and sorrows, but he overcame all of these with Christian love, wisdom, and humility. Because of his devout efforts, the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, having returned under the omophorion of the patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, has preserved all that was the most valuable from its past and has found new strength and meaning in the modern world.

I am with you in my prayers and thoughts, and I wish all the faithful of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad spiritual strength in this sorrow that has befallen them.

With steadfast love and sympathy,

H.I.H. Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna 

Madrid, 3/16 March 2008