George Australia is right and, if I may be forgiven for being frank, I think that others may have perhaps read their own conceptions about ROCOR into His Grace Archbishop HILARION's words because I read exactly the same thing and I did not detect any recognition of Anglican hierarchs as true bishops of the Church.
I know many Anglican priests. I refer to them as priests because in their religious tradition, that is what they are called. That does not mean that I recognise them as priests of the Church because they cannot be, but within their own religious tradition, the word used to refer to them is priest and it is simply a matter of good manners to refer to them as such. Some of them are my friends and so they know me and my Orthodox beliefs, and they know full well that when I refer to them as priests I am extending a courtesy and not making a doctrinal statement.
It seems to me that Archbishop Hilarion is simply trying to extend congratulations to somebody who is trying, in however flawed a manner, to bring people to Christ, for having been elevated to episcopal rank within his own tradition. At no point did the good archbishop say, 'You are a bishop of the Church: congratulations!'
It is also worth bearing in mind just who this David Robarts is. He is a former priest and now a bishop of a group called The Traditional Anglican Communion. The TAC is one of a number of groups which are collectively referred to as the "Anglican Continuum" or "Continuing Anglican churches" - they are not part of the historical Anglican Communion which is united with Canterbury. They broke away from various member churches of the Anglican Communion under Canterbury after that communion began to "ordain" women, sexually-active homosexual people, &c, and they actively preach and speak out against many of the changes in society's moral code. Therefore, the comments made above about Anglican "support of sodomy and pre-natal infanticide" are completely irrelevant here because they do not apply to this particular group of Anglicans.
It is also worth noting that people who leave the Anglican Communion under Canterbury to join Continuing Anglican churches (such as the Traditional Anglican Communion) find themselves removed from the old arguments of the churches they left behind and are no longer bogged down by debates about sex and women in orders, and so have the time to explore their own faith and deepen their own spirituality. The result is that many of them become Orthodox. I know that Archbishop HILARION is aware of this fact as well because he has, in the past, received a number of people into Orthodoxy who had previously served as priests in these Continuing Anglican churches and later realised that Orthodoxy is where they should be. One of the monastic foundations under his care is made up almost entirely of former Anglicans and Continuing Anglicans, and it may just be that being seen to keep good relations with these groups is his way of keeping those channels open for the salvation of souls by bringing them into the bosom of the Church.
I think that it is too easy sometimes for all of us to read our own conceptions into things but it is worth looking a little deeper at what is actually being said (rather than what we think at first glance is being said), and seeing what the wider situation is before we judge people's meaning and motives.
