№ 23. Замечание Митрополита Филарета на проект определения Св. Синода по делу о не представлении Архиепископом Фаворским Иерофеем полугодовых отчетов о сборе пожертвований в пользу Иерусалимского храма

In July 1832, Patriarch Athanasius of Jerusalem sent a letter to the Holy Synod, in which he asked permission to send persons authorized by him to collect donations in favor of the Jerusalem Church of the Resurrection of Christ. According to the most submissive report on this from Chief Prosecutor S. D. Nechaev, the Sovereign Highly approved the determination of the Holy Synod, which authorized the Patriarch of Jerusalem to send persons to collect donations for three years; but with the condition that the trustees are obliged to submit to the Holy Synod every six months brief reports on their actions, which must be compiled according to the collection book issued by the Holy Synod and certified in the consistory of the diocese where the collection will be made. Having received this permission, the Patriarch of Jerusalem sent His Eminence Hierotheus, Archbishop of Tabor, to Russia, but the Holy Synod found it indecent to allow the Archbishop to collect, so he ordered the archimandrite and abbot who arrived with His Eminence Hierotheus to collect donations, and His Eminence only to supervise the collection. His Eminence Hierotheus arrived in Moscow, where he lived throughout the collection, without ever submitting a report to the Holy Synod, and at the end of it in March 1839, he presented Metropolitan Philaret with a brief statement about the collection of donations, from which it can be seen that 348,000 rubles were collected. Metropolitan Philaret proposed this extract to the Holy Synod, where a draft definition was drawn up, after reading which His Grace Philaret wrote: “It seems that it should be said this way: - although instead of the semi-annual reports proposed by the Holy Synod, one final one is presented, and is not testified in the consistory with the book; but how can this be attributed to anything other than the eastern clergy’s unaccustomment to the accuracy of office work according to accepted forms, but there is no doubt about this; then the submitted report has been taken into account.” You might be interested in: