The metropolitan was found dead at a seminary in Jordanville, New York, U.S. He had complained of feeling ill over the last few days.
Alexy II, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, expressed his condolences to Archbishop Mark of Berlin and Germany, the second deputy head of the Pontifical Synod at the ROCOR.
"The death of Metropolitan Laurus is a big loss to the entire Russian Orthodox Church. We... have a clear vision of the man as having had enough wisdom and courage to put an end to a decades-long rift between the churches," a spokesman for the Moscow Patriarchate's department of trans-Orthodox relations, Archpriest Nikolai Balashov, was quoted as saying.
Laurus and Alexy II 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.
Metropolitan Laurus was born Vasily Skurla in Czechoslovakia in 1928 and entered the church at the age of 11, he was evacuated to Switzerland during WWII and emigrated to the United States in 1946.
Religious analysts believe Laurus' death and the subsequent election of a new metropolitan could be a pretext to split the ROCOR, which was not unanimous in its approval of reunification with Russia.
No exact date for the funeral has been set, which will be held at the Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, where he first received his name as a monk in 1946. However, preliminary reports said the ceremony is likely to be held on Thursday.
Laurus will be replaced by one of the 11 bishops from the Pontifical Synod. The body is likely to hold elections after Easter on April 27.
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.
