He spent a childhood he described as having been "pleasant ... absolutely free of any harmful influences", walking two and a half miles to school each day.

From his youth, Kapral felt drawn to the Church and loved to read books and periodicals on religion and morals.

He attended Holy Trinity Church in Spirit River, a congregation of the ROCOR composed of ethnic Ukrainians.

[1] In 1966, Kapral found a spiritual guide: Right Reverend Sava (Saračević), Bishop of Edmonton, a Serb who greatly revered John of Shanghai and San Francisco.

From his second year at seminary, Kapral was tasked with typesetting "Orthodox Life" in English, under the editorship of archimandrite Constantine Zaitsev; Igor soon succeeded him as editor.

[5] On 14 May of that year, he was approved by the Holy Synod of the Moscow Patriarchate to the post of the primate[6] and elevated to the rank of metropolitan.

On the first day of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Hilarion, an ethnic Ukrainian who spoke Ukrainian at home as a child,[1] issued an "Epistle to the Clergy and Flock ... on Great Lent and on the Events on the Holy Ukrainian Land" commencing: As we approach Great Lent, this salvific time of profound prayer and self-correction, and in connection with the events in the Ukrainian land, I turn to all with a heartfelt plea: to refrain from excessive watching television, following newspapers and the internet, to close our hearts to the passions ignited by mass media, while doubling our fervent prayers for peace throughout the world, for overcoming enmity and discord, for help for the suffering, for the repose of those who have departed into the eternal life and the consolation of their friends and relatives, so that we all first and foremost remain humane and Orthodox Christians in these difficult times.