The residence of Filaret, the patriarch of Kyiv and all Ukraine is no luxurious episcopal palace.
The ascetic quarters on Kyiv’s Pushkinska Street, where Filaret has lived since the 1960s, reflect both the relative poverty of his Kyiv Patriarchate and its negative attitude to ostentatious displays of wealth.
“If the church uses wealth to serve the people, it’s good,” he said. “But if it is used for luxury, it’s bad.”
By contrast, the Kyiv Patriarchate’s main rival, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, is accused of wallowing in luxury. Neither the Moscow Patriarchate nor its Ukrainian branch was available for comment by email or phone.
The Kyiv Patriarchate, which describes itself as patriotic and pro-European, has strengthened its position after supporting the EuroMaidan Revolution that drove President Viktor Yanukovych out of power. It has also taken a strong stand in support of Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s war. Now it is hoping that the wave of patriotic sentiment will help unify the two major Ukrainian Orthodox groups into a single independent church.
Filaret has been at the epicenter of Ukrainian church politics since 1966, when he became the metropolitan of Kyiv as part of the Russian Orthodox Church. He fell out with the Moscow Patriarchate in 1992 and became the patriarch of Kyiv and all Ukraine in 1995.
The Kyiv Patriarchate, which has 2,781 parishes, split from the Moscow Patriarchate’s Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which has 11,358 parishes, in 1992, after Moscow refused to recognize the Ukrainian church’s independence. The Kyiv Patriarchate has not yet been recognized by any of the 15 autocephalous, or independent, Orthodox churches.
However, the two Ukrainian churches have been negotiating about possible re-unification.
“The unification of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the Kyiv Patriarchate will inevitably happen because Ukraine has become an independent state,” Filaret said in an interview with the Kyiv Post. “Ukraine as an independent state must have its own independent church.”
He cited the historic examples of Greece, Romania, Bulgaria and Serbia, saying that their independence from the Ottoman Empire gave them a right to have autocephalous churches.
However, the Moscow Patriarchate’s Ukrainian branch is against unification into a single independent church and wants the Kyiv Patriarchate to merge with the Moscow Patriarchate instead, Filaret said.
“Moscow doesn’t want this unification and is doing everything possible to make sure it doesn’t happen,” he added.
Filaret said nothing had changed in the position of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Ukrainian branch regarding unification since Metropolitan Onufry, seen by many as pro-Russian, became its head in August.
“We don’t see any patriotic feelings in him,” Filaret said, adding that Onufry had been against an association deal with the European Union and refused to aid the Ukrainian army.
Ironically, it was Filaret who ordained as bishops both Onufry – in 1990 – and the current Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia, Kirill, in 1976.
Filaret also said there were some pro-Ukrainian bishops at the Moscow Patriarchate’s Ukrainian branch but attributed the reluctance of most bishops to unite with the Kyiv Patriarchate to their fear of “punishment from Moscow.”
But Filaret said he still supported dialogue with the Moscow Patriarchate.
Another major participant of these talks is the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. Filaret said that in 1992 he met with Bartholomew, the patriarch of Constantinople, who said the Ukrainian church had a right to autocephaly. But Bartholomew said the two major Ukrainian Orthodox churches should first unite before their independence is recognized, Filaret added.
He said that the Kyiv Patriarchate was still having informal talks with the Constantinople Patriarchate and discussing potential recognition.
Filaret also said that unification was more likely to happen as a result of more Moscow Patriarchate parishes switching to the Kyiv Patriarchate. About 20 parishes have switched to the Kyiv Patriarchate over the past two months, he said.
“The Kyiv Patriarchate supports the people and the Ukrainian army, and the Moscow Patriarchate can’t do this because it is dependent on Moscow,” he said. “That is why the people are angry about this and are transferring their allegiance to the Kyiv Patriarchate.”
The Kyiv Patriarchate gained prominence during the Euromaidan Revolution, when it threw its support behind the popular uprising. Its priests regularly delivered speeches on Maidan Nezalezhnosti and its churches were turned into hospitals for Euromaidan activists.
“President Yanukovych deceived the Ukrainian people,” Filaret said. “He was preparing for an association agreement with the EU but backtracked at the last moment.”
He said that the church backed the revolution because it should always be with its people. The Moscow Patriarchate, on the other hand, did not take any official position and was accused of informally supporting Yanukovych.
The positions of the two churches on the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian conflict are also very different.
The Kyiv Patriarchate has unequivocally condemned Russia’s annexation of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine. “We believe this to be Russian aggression, Filaret said. “And this aggressor did not stop in Crimea and went further – to Donbas.”
Filaret compared Russian President Vladimir Putin to Cain, a biblical character. “Cain lied to God. God asked Cain ‘Where is thy brother Abel?’, and Cain answered ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’” Filaret said. “That’s what Putin is doing. He’s waging a war, killing Ukrainian brothers and saying that he has nothing to do with that, and that Ukrainians are fighting a civil war among themselves.”
Unlike the Kyiv Patriarchate, the Russian Orthodox Church’s Ukrainian branch has usually abstained from commenting on Russia’s aggression and has been accused of supporting Russia and separatists. The only notable exceptions were the statements in July and August by Georgy Kovalenko, a spokesman for the Moscow Patriarchate’s Ukrainian branch, that Crimea was an integral part of Ukraine and Onufry’s statement in August that there were no priests in his church who supported separatism.
“This undeclared war also helps the cause of unifying Orthodox believers into one independent church because it shows whom the Kyiv Patriarchate serves and whom the Moscow Patriarchate serves,” Filaret said. “The Kyiv Patriarchate serves the Ukrainian people, and the Moscow Patriarchate doesn’t… It serves Russia.”
Another difference between the patriarchates is the way they treat dissent.
Filaret said that the Russian Orthodox Church’s campaign to demonize the Pussy Riot punk band and its approval of two-year jail terms for two of the group’s members in 2012 only damaged the church. The Pussy Riot members were charged with hooliganism for singing an anti-Putin song at Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral in February 2012.
“What these women did is evil,” Filaret said. “But turning it into a scandal did not serve the church but damaged it. They should not have given such publicity to it.”
When FEMEN, a Ukrainian feminist protest group, sawed off a cross in Kyiv in support of Pussy Riot in August 2012, the Kyiv Patriarchate behaved differently.
“They wanted to make a scandal out of it,” Filaret said. “I said no, it will pass and be forgotten. But if we had given publicity to it, it would only have helped those immoral people who sawed off the cross.”
The Moscow Patriarchate’s luxury has also been a permanent source of scandals as Patriarch Kirill and other clerics have been criticized for owning high-end cars and Swiss watches and living in ostentatious residences.
Filaret described Kirill as “not a spiritual man” who likes the “external grandeur of the Catholic Church” and looks to its wealth as an example. At the Kyiv Patriarchate, there is little leeway for corruption because it is quite poor, Filaret said.
Just as the issue of wealth, accusations of close links to the state have also plagued the Moscow Patriarchate. The Kyiv Patriarchate’s views on relations with the state are different.
“In Ukraine, the church is not only separated from the state but enjoys full freedom and is independent from the state,” Filaret said. “In Russia the church is also (formally) separated from the state but it is dependent on the state”. This symbiosis is one reason why Patriarch Kirill can’t condemn Putin’s aggression against Ukraine, Filaret said.
As citizens, clergy have a right to support certain parties, Filaret said, adding that the Kyiv Patriarchate backed all parties that support Ukraine’s independence as a nation.
The Moscow Patriarchate had close ties to the Soviet-era KGB and is believed by critics to have the same with its Russian successor, the Federal Security Agency, or FSB. Filaret said that all bishops had to cooperate with the KGB and that a bishop did not have the right to ordain a priest without the KGB’s approval.
“Either the church existed and had contacts with the KGB or the church was liquidated,” he said. While some bishops served the church despite their links with the security agency, others were KGB informers who served the state, Filaret said.
“The most active informer was the late Patriarch Alexiy (II),” Kirill’s predecessor, he said.
In 1990, Filaret competed with Alexiy, who was accused by critics of being the “KGB’s candidate,” for the top job in the Russian Orthodox Church, but lost out. Filaret also said that most Ukrainian bishops initially supported the Ukrainian church’s independence in the early 1990s but then backtracked because of pressure by security agencies.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oleg Sukhov can be reached at [email protected]. Kyiv Post+ offers special coverage of Russia’s war against Ukraine and the aftermath of the Euromaidan Revolution
