The chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations (DECR), Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev) of Volokolamsk, in an interview with RIA Novosti, called unfounded accusations that the Moscow Patriarchate follows the ideology of the “Third Rome” and longs to become the leader of the Orthodox world.

“This is the outdated rhetoric of the Cold War, 1960s of the last century … It was then that arguments began to emerge that the Russian Church yearned for primacy in world Orthodoxy, that we were preaching the ideology of the“ Third Rome. ”Later, the corresponding theses sounded in the contacts of the leadership Phanara with American diplomats,” he said.