Department for External Church Relations
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Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk expresses condolences to Reinhard Cardinal Marx, President of German Bishops’ Conference, over the demise of Msgr. Dr. Albert Rauch
Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, chairman of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations, expressed his condolences to Reinhard Cardinal Marx, President of the German Bishops’ Conference, Archbishop of Munich and Freizing, over the death of Msgr. Dr. Albert Rauch, Director of the Institute of Eastern Churches in Regensburg. The text of the message is given below.
Your Eminence,
Please, accept my deep condolences over the demise of Msgr. Dr. Albert Rauch, founder and decades-long director of the Institute of Eastern Church in Regensburg.
Fr. Albert Rauch devoted all his working life and moral forces to the goal of bringing closer together the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern, first of all, Orthodox, Churches. It was before the Vatican II, which initiated the Orthodox-Catholic dialogue, that Albert Rauch, at that time a student of the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, put forward an idea of establishing a special institute for studying Byzantine theology and liturgics. Thanks to his close cooperation with prominent Orthodox hierarchs and theologians, Fr. Albert Rauch managed to head the Institute of Eastern Churches in Regensburg as far back as 1972 and was its director until the last days of his life.
All these years have been marked by fruitful cooperation between the Institute of Eastern Churches and the Moscow Patriarchate. The Primates of the Russian Orthodox Church often expressed their appreciation to Fr. Albert Rauch for his work, as, owing to his personal efforts, many students of our Church studied at the Institute of Eastern Churches and other theological educational institutions of the Catholic Church. For his services, he was worthily awarded the orders of the Russian Orthodox Church – the Order of the Holy Right-Believing Prince Daniel of Moscow and the Order of St Sergius of Radonezh.
I will always have the warmest recollections of Fr. Albert Rauch, whom I knew well. May the All-Merciful Lord rest his soul in the dwellings of the righteous. Eternal memory be to him!
With love in the Lord,
/Hilarion/
Metropolitan of Volokolamsk
Chairman
Department for External Church Relations
Moscow Patriarchate
Sermons
24.01.2021
06.11.2020