Metropolitan Hilarion's faux pas.

[Kybihetz21]

I couldn’t but smile at the ignorance of Metropolitan Hilarion (Kapral) and those that advise him when, in a recent interview, he mentioned the idea of forming a mission in the city of Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic (the English translation of the interview is found here: http://www.russianorthodoxchurch.ws/syn ... rview.html). Among his comments, the Metropolitan states that the name of the new parish will be Holy Resurrection, in reference to the name of the capital of that country, which means, “Holy Sunday”. Well, that’s a MISTAKE. Santo Domingo, although technically means “Holy Sunday”, is not named after the day of the week, or the resurrection of the Lord, but after the Catholic saint Santo Domingo de Guzman, or simply in English, Saint Dominic (a popular saint among Roman Catholics). I wonder how many other blunders like this go unnoticed or are part of the political and religious rhetoric of this clergyman of the Moscow Patriarchate …

[Catherine5]

Glad you pointed that out, for I rolled my eyes too when I read it.
St Dominic is revered as a zealous missionary founder of a major order, the Dominicans. His role in suppressing the Albigensian heresy in southern France in the late 1100s and early 1200s is questionable, but it has always been praised lavishly by the Catholic Church.
St Dominic's most lasting contribution is considered to be that he was given the same Rosary by the Mother of God which is still said today, nearly 800 years later, by Catholics and others who trust in its great power to win Her intercession in every matter.
[Together with wearing the Miraculous Medal and the Brown Scapular of Mt Carmel, the Rosary is the cornerstone of Catholic spirituality. So it's pretty hard to miss such a reference to Santo Domingo anywhere in Central and South America, where many churches too are named in his honor.
But most especially, in the capital of what? The Dominican Republic! - did Metr. Hilarion think that he was visiting "The Sunday Republic"?]

Yes, one can imagine that Hilarion's uneducated comment in print was only the tip of the iceberg. What about his spoken words in front of delegations for example? His gaffes might number in the thousands by the end of his tenure...
Met. Hilarion was a backwoods boy and it shows.
Maybe a more savvy team needs to replace those holdovers from the Laurus Administration, like Fr Serafim Gan, who looks ill anyway

What puts up a red flag is why the Russian community in such a small Caribbean republic is expanding so rapidly. That Rocor-[H] report said it has grown to 4,000. I feel some analysts have gotten unnecessarily hysterical about Moscow's muscly arm reaching into Latin America to demonstrate its power on the fringes of U.S.
But maybe too, Met Hilarion may have been visiting the Russian community on a Moscow assignment to provide a boost of morale for KGB purposes, or ---?
Maybe something to keep an eye trained on.