During the fifth plenary session of the Sacred Bishops’ Council of the Russian Orthodox Church, held Wednesday, 03 February 2016, in the Synodal Hall of Christ the Saviour Cathedral in Moscow, the canonization proposal of the Bulgarian Archbishop Seraphim Sobolev was considered.
At the session also participated a delegation of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, comprised of His Eminence Metropolitan Ioann of Varna and Veliki Preslav, His Grace Bishop Arseny of Znepolsk, vicar of the Metropolis of Plodviv, and V. Rev. Archimandrite Feoktist Dimitrov, representative of the Bulgarian Patriarch to the Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia.
Speeches on the life and veneration of the holy hierarch were read by His Eminence Metropolitan Ilarion of Volokolamsk, Head of the Department of External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, and Metropolitan Ioann, co-chairmen of the Joint Commission of the Russian and Bulgarian Orthodox Churches on the Canonization of Archbishop Seraphim.
His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia stressed the need to glorify Archbishop Seraphim.
The members of the Council unanimously voted for the glorification of Archbishop Seraphim, who has been venerated for many years in Bulgaria and Russia. Metropolitan Ilarion then read the Act of the Holy Council of Bishops announcing the canonization of Archbishop Seraphim among the host of saints.
The Council members then sang the exaltation to the newly-glorified saint.
His Holiness Patriarch Kirill then gave Metropolitan Ioann an icon of St Seraphim painted at St Petersburg Theological Academy as a gift to the Bulgarian Orthodox Church.
Source:pravoslavie.ru
