After rising to the top of the Russian Orthodox Church, Filaret was instrumental in creating a Ukrainian church free of Moscow's influence; now as Patriarch of Kyiv and Rus-Ukraine, he leads 10 million followers of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kyiv Patriarchate
A third, smaller Autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church also exists.
According to various opinion polls, the Kyiv Patriarchate has 10 million believers across the country.
Filaret, the patriarch of Kyiv and Rus‑Ukraine, leads the Kyiv Patriarchate. Filaret is a controversial figure. Dismissed by his enemies as a renegade and an opportunist, he is seen by his admirers as the driving force behind the creation of an independent Ukrainian church.
The latter include Dmytro Stepovyk, a lecturer in theology and philosophy at the Kyiv Theological Seminary and the Kyiv Mohyla Academy.
“Filaret is certainly an important figure, a strong, charismatic personality,” Stepovyk said. “No other political or social figure could throw down such a strong challenge to the Moscow church empire. That’s why he inspires such strong antipathy.”
The Russian Orthodox Church responded to Filaret’s challenge by anathematizing him in 1997.
Filaret has consistently spoken out against the Russian church’s influence over Ukrainian ecclesiastical affairs. For example, when Communist Party leader Petro Symonenko suggested on March 21 establishing a commission to gradually transfer the Kyiv‑Pechersk Lavra from the state to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church‑Moscow Patriarchate, Filaret objected.
“The Lavra is a Ukrainian holy place, and the Moscow Patriarchate represents the church of a foreign country,” he said.
Scenes from clerical life
Born Mykhailo Denysenko in the Donetsk Oblast village of Blahodatne in 1929, Filaret rose rapidly through the ranks of the Russian Orthodox Church during the Soviet period.
Denysenko studied in the Moscow Theological Academy in the early 1950s, where he assumed the monastic name of Filaret. He became rector of Kyiv Theological Seminary in 1958. Six years later, he returned to the Moscow academy as rector.
In 1966, Filaret became archbishop of Kyiv and Halychyna, exarch of Ukraine and a permanent member of the Holy Synod in Moscow. He was the first Ukrainian to head the exarchate for 150 years. In 1968, he became metropolitan of Kyiv and Halychyna.
During the Soviet period, Filaret was seen as loyal to Moscow and frequently represented the church at international ecclesiastical gatherings.
In the 1980s, Filaret appealed to the authorities to transfer the Lavra to the church.
After the death of Patriarch Pimen of Moscow and All Rus in 1990, Filaret served as temporary administrator of the Moscow Patriarchate until the election of Aleksy II.
In October of that year, the Russian Orthodox Church responded to calls for greater independence by granting the Ukrainian Orthodox Church considerable powers of self‑government. Filaret was named metropolitan of Kyiv and All Ukraine.
After Ukraine became independent, however, Filaret headed a movement to declare the full canonical independence (autocephaly) of his church.
At a council in November 1991, Filaret’s followers called on Patriarch Aleksy II and the Russian Orthodox Church hierarchy to recognize the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. In April 1992, the hierarchical council of the Russian Orthodox Church rejected the request.
Filaret refused to back down, and a council of bishops of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church loyal to the Moscow Patriarchate met in Kharkiv in May and voted to remove Filaret from the post of metropolitan and deprive him of his monastic status.
Filaret and a number of other bishops proceeded to form an alliance with the Autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Founded in the early 20th century and suppressed by the Soviets in the 1930s, the UAOC was kept alive by the Diaspora and returned to Ukraine in the late Soviet period. Together they created the Ukrainian Orthodox Church‑Kyiv Patriarchate in June 1992.
Filaret initially acted only as assistant to the nonagenarian leader of the UAOC, Patriarch Mstyslav. That arrangement continued under Mstyslav’s successor Patriarch Volodymyr (Vasyl Romanyuk), a former political prisoner and dissident priest who returned from exile in North America in 1990.
By the time of Volodymyr’s death in 1995, however, the alliance between the two groups had broken down.
Filaret was elected patriarch by a national council. The other three candidates nominated by the council of archbishops all withdrew before the vote, and Filaret was elected unanimously.
An independent church
Filaret has continued to work toward creation of a unified Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
“I consider that the existence of Ukrainian statehood is possible only on condition of the existence of a united Orthodox church, and I devote all my energies to that goal,” he said.
According to Filaret, since 2000 the Kyiv Patriarchate and the UAOC have gradually been moving closer again.
“There are however political forces that are resisting this, preventing unification,” he said.
The Kyiv Patriarchate also hopes to obtain a document of autocephaly, known as a Tomos, from the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople. The Constantinople Patriarch does not acknowledge the absorption of the Kyiv Metropolitanate by the Moscow Patriarchate in 1686 and continues to consider Ukraine its canonical territory.
Filaret is convinced that if the Tomos is granted, Orthodox churches in other countries will recognize the Ukrainian church.
Filaret rejects suggestions that he violated church law by declaring the independence of the church.
“There are grounds that give Ukraine the right to an independent church. Namely, the 34th Apostolic rule, which states that every nation should have its own church,” he said.
He points out that in other predominantly Orthodox states, the national churches themselves have generally declared their independence. That is what happened in Russia in 1448. The same is true of Orthodox churches in Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia and Albania.
As well as being an influential figure in church and society, Filaret is also a skilled politician, according to Ihor Yukhnovsky, an academic and Our Ukraine deputy.
“I have followed his activity closely, and in all that time I have not seen him make a single political mistake,” he said.
Yukhnovsky considers Filaret a worthy candidate to head the unified church.
Filaret confirms that in the event of a unification of Ukrainian Orthodox churches, he would head it if elected by the assembly.
God and president
The Kyiv Patriarchate supports the president and is subordinate to him as head of state. However, Filaret would like to see the authorities take a more active stance on the church’s independence.
“We welcomed President Leonid Kuchma’s announcement of the need for a unified Ukrainian church, but we would like these declarations to be followed by concrete steps,” he said. “We understand why the president cannot take such a step. It is dependent on Ukraine’s relations with Russia.”
However, Filaret still hopes that the church will receive more attention. He said that there are often delays in the registration of Kyiv Patriarchate parishes, especially in the south and east of the country.
“If the authorities really did have an even‑handed attitude to the Moscow and Kyiv Patriarchates, as they claim to, then we would have many more parishes than we do,” he said.
Today Filaret is supervising the translation of theological texts from Old Church Slavonic into Ukrainian, and the publication and distribution of such literature.
Filaret conducts services in Ukrainian only.
“Without services in Ukrainian there can be no Ukrainian church,” he said.
Filaret also sees his role in the spiritual rebirth of the population.
“We would like to see the teaching of Christian ethics in schools, but we have not yet been allowed this opportunity,” he said.
Filaret is currently preparing a volume for the use of parents wishing to bring up their children in a Christian spirit.
“We consider it necessary to strengthen and broaden the Kyiv Patriarchate so that it acquires a leading role in Ukrainian religious life. This will serve as a foundation for the recognition of our church,” he said.
Filaret was also involved in the restoration of Saint Michael’s Golden Domed Cathedral in Kyiv in the late 1990s. The Bolsheviks demolished the original cathedral in the 1930s.
The church is financed by donations from parishioners, whose contributions range from small sums paid for candles to shares in enterprises and real estate. Filaret receives a monthly salary of Hr 700. He drives a Mercedes that was given to him by an unidentified donor.
This profile was originally published in Russian in Korrespondent magazine on April 8 as part of its Top‑100 series devoted to the 100 most influential individuals in Ukraine.
