I can tell you where I was the moment Archbishop Hilarion of Sydney, Australia and New Zealand, the Deputy First Hierarch of the Russian Church Abroad, was elected Metropolitan. It was at St. John’s Academy, in the basement of Holy Virgin Cathedral, San Francisco. Matushka Maria Kotar, the Administrator of the school, was trying to find every means possible to get news from Jordanville about the election. “We need smoke signals! CNN coverage!” (I’m paraphrasing, forgive me) Unfortunately (or fortunately, perhaps) Jordanville is not the Vatican, and so we had to resort to phone calls and other primitive means to get news. At any rate, Matushka Masya wanted the bells to be rung as soon as word came that a new Metropolitan was elected.
And word came very soon. After all, our humble conclave consisted of eleven bishops. In a space of less than half an hour, a new Metropolitan was chosen. The bells! The bells! I rushed outside to hear those bells, the bells which rang by themselves the night that Vladyka Laurus reposed, now ringing loudly to celebrate the choice of a new leader for our flock.
The seventh graders, clapping their little hands over their ears, nevertheless shouted “More! More!” to the young bell-ringer. I’m sure I’m making a ton of mistakes in my remembrance of things, but the bells were something like this (this being from then-Archbishop Hilarion’s visit to a monastery in New South Wales):
It was truly one of the chief highlights of my stay in San Francisco, to say the least.
