Metropolitan Hilarion's cell attendant accused him of sexual harassment, he told Novaya Gazeta Evropa about this.
Hilarion has been the chairman of the Department of External Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate since 2009, and the media called him a potential successor to Patriarch Kirill. In June 2022 without explanation he was appointed Metropolitan of Budapest and Hungary.
As Novaya Gazeta Europe writes, at the same time, 18-year-old Georgy Suzuki, a young man from a Russian-Japanese family, invited Hilarion to become his cell attendant — his assistant. Suzuki said that he had already been in correspondence with Hilarion before and wanted to “support the hierarch who had lost his position.” The Metropolitan agreed, and in October 2022 the young man arrived in Budapest.
According to Suzuki, at first he lived in his cell, but after a few weeks Hilarion invited him to move into a room in his apartment to help with the housework. In November, the metropolitan took his cell attendant to a dacha in France, where Suzuki fell ill. The young man said that during a fever attack, Hilarion stripped him down to his underwear and lay down in his bed.
Upon returning to Hungary, Hilarion began to visit Suzuki in the evenings, and then began to go to bed next to him. The cell attendant says that he “was under constant psychological pressure and could not express disagreement,” and in September 2023, when he tried to do so, he began to receive threats from Hilarion.
For example, to the young man’s question “What will happen if I leave you?” The Metropolitan replied: “It will be bad.” These words were captured on an audio recording made by Suzuki. In another recording, Hilarion forbids the young man to wear pajamas before bed. According to the cell attendant, the Metropolitan said that he wanted to “feel him with his skin” and “lay him down like a father.”
Hilarion has repeatedly criticized the Catholic Church for allowing blessings of LGBTQ people. In 2021, he supported a Russian law banning “LGBT propaganda,” and in 2018 he argued that a person can be “returned to a traditional orientation.”
In January 2024, George Suzuki decided to escape. He told Hilarion that he was going to take a blood test in Budapest, and he himself flew to Japan. Before leaving, he took 30 thousand euros and a watch from the Metropolitan’s estate. According to Suzuki, after months of living in fear, he was “unable to assess the situation sensibly” and decided that having Hilarion’s values would help him avoid pressure from him. Because of the theft, a criminal case was opened in Hungary, and Suzuki was put on the wanted list.
Ilarion called the accusations of harassment “baseless” and promised to file a lawsuit for libel. The Metropolitan did not deny the authenticity of the audio recordings, however, in his opinion, the young man made them illegally. Hilarion stressed that he did not have a sexual relationship with his assistant.
Suzuki claims that after the escape, Hilarion sent him letters of apology and bargained with his family about the amount for which “she would agree to forget about what happened » Hilarion insists that Suzuki's mother Veronica blackmailed him. “The woman, who saw that I had, as she thought, a lot of money, decided that I needed to take advantage of it,” the Metropolitan said.