Metropolitan Laurus, the ROCOR head who signed a historic unification act with the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow last May, was found dead at a seminary in Jordanville, New York, U.S. on Sunday. He had complained of feeling ill over the last few days. He was 80 years old.
"His Eminence Hilarion is the next most respected hierarch after Archbishop Laurus," said Seraphim Gan, the late metropolitan's private secretary.
Laurus will be replaced by one of the 11 bishops from the Pontifical Synod. The body is likely to hold elections after Orthodox Easter on April 27. The exact date of elections will be fixed in the next few days.
Metropolitan Laurus proposed Hilarion as ROCOR head in 2001, but the Pontifical Synod unanimously favored Laurus.
Sources at the ROCOR and the Moscow patriarchate said they did not rule out the possibility of the canonization of Metropolitan Laurus.
While admitting that it was too early to speak of canonization, Gan said, "We have lost a unique man. He was a living saint."
Laurus will be buried on Friday at the Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville.
Laurus and Alexy II, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, signed a church unification act reestablishing canonical ties between the two churches in Moscow on May 17. The document was widely seen as a milestone on the way toward overcoming a decades-long rift with the foreign-based branch.
The ROCOR is a jurisdiction of Eastern Orthodoxy that was formed in response to the Bolshevik policy towards religion in the Soviet Union soon after the Russian Revolution of 1917.
