On Dec. 15, thousands braved the cold to gather at St. Sophia’s Cathedral in Kyiv and celebrate the creation of a new unified Orthodox church independent of Moscow and recognized by the world. And many of these believers thanked Patriarch Filaret for stepping for ceding power for the sake of the new church.
Filaret didn’t appear before the crowd that day. Many felt sad about his absence. After all, he had created and governed the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate for 23 years. It had split from the Russian Patriarchate in 1992, a year after Ukraine gained independence.
After that, Moscow effectively excommunicated him from much of the Orthodox world.
But when Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, spiritual leader of Orthodox Christians, agreed to recognize an independent Ukrainian Orthodox church in 2018, one of the conditions was that it not be led by Filaret.
On Dec. 15, a special council elected Metropolitan Epiphanius, Filaret’s former secretary and protégé, to head the newly formed Orthodox Church of Ukraine. Meanwhile, Filaret received the title of the patriarch emeritus of Kyiv and all Ukraine and the right to be in charge of the church issues in Kyiv city and Kyiv Oblast.
But six months later, it has become clear that symbolic power isn’t enough for 90-year-old Filaret, who has been one of the most influential Ukrainian clerics since the 1960s. He wants the real thing.
On June 20, Filaret invited loyal bishops to Volodymyrsky Cathedral in Kyiv, where he usually conducts services and announced a split from the new Orthodox Church of Ukraine and the restoration of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchy. Only two bishops joined that meeting.
Filaret claimed that former President Petro Poroshenko, who played a key role in the creation of the new church, and Metropolitan Epiphanius had fooled him, promising that he will de facto govern the new church inside Ukraine, while Epiphanius would just represent it abroad.
As a result, Filaret decided to reverse the deal and leave the new church.
“The church in Ukraine is experiencing very hard times,” Filaret told a press conference on June 25.
But clerics and religious scholars say that it is Filaret who will soon encounter hard times. He has minimal support among clergy and parishes. He also risks eventually being expelled from the canonical church and losing any honorable place in history by provoking a split in the church.
At the same time, experts say that, without Filaret, the church would see a boost in its development.
With about 9 million believers, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine is the largest in the country and the fifth largest Orthodox church in the world. But no foreign Orthodox church, other than the Ecumenical Church in Constantinople (Istanbul), has formally recognized it yet because it was unclear if Filaret would have an influence on the new church, said religious scholar Oleksandr Sagan.
“The personality of Filaret is toxic for many foreign Orthodox churches,” he said. Now, when Filaret’s role is minimal, two or three churches will likely recognize the new Ukrainian church by the end of the year.
Patriarch Filaret at ceremony of worship for Orthodox Christian Christmas at St. Volodymyr cathedral in Kyiv on Jan. 6. 2019. (Oleg Petrasiuk)
Spiritual fathers and children
On June 24, Metropolitan Epiphanius sat for hours with other bishops at a Holy Synod in the Metropolitan House of St. Sophia Cathedral, thinking about how to deal with defiant Filaret. In the end, they chose harsh measures for his supporters and a mild punishment for him.
The two bishops who joined Filaret’s restored Kyiv Patriarchate were stripped from their bishops’ titles. The two clerics whom Filaret recently elevated to bishops were banned from church service.
Filaret kept his bishop’s status but lost the right to manage and control churches and monasteries in the city of Kyiv and Kyiv Oblast. Sagan compares his new status to an “honorable pension.”
Archbishop Eustratiy, who announced the Synod’s decision to the press, said the Kyiv Patriarchate was disbanded in December 2018 when it joined the new church, and all of Filaret’s statements on its behalf “have neither a canonical nor a legal foundation.”
But Eustratiy, who was Filaret’s spokesman for years, refused to say what will happen if Filaret keeps ignoring the Holy Synod.
Most bishops of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine were taught by Filaret and ordained him, said the Rev. Sergiy, a priest who manages the church’s social services.
“He (Filaret) has always been like a father to them. And he worries about the church as a father worries about his children,” Rev. Sergiy said.
Sometimes fathers think they know better than their grown children, and they can turn out to be wrong. That’s what is happening with Filaret, he added.
“Filaret doesn’t hear us,” said Epiphanius in a recent interview with the Novoye Vremya magazine, commenting on the current arguments with his former boss.
Political meddling
Sagan says that Filaret’s ambitions prevented the canonical and independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church from being created ten years earlier.
“Back in 2007-2008, they offered the same conditions that Constantinople’s representatives offered in 2018,” he said.
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew didn’t want Filaret to lead the new church, because, in the 1990s, Filaret actively tried to unite unrecognized Orthodox churches in Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Montenegro. That outraged Constantinople, Sagan said.
But Poroshenko managed to persuade Filaret to cede power, hoping that success in creating the independent church would help him be reelected the president.
In late November, several media shared Filaret’s letter to Patriarch Bartholomew, in which he promised not to apply to be leader of the new church. Instead, he would recommend Epiphanius for that post.
After Constantinople granted the new church tomos — a parchment decree confirming its independence from Moscow — in January, Filaret and Epiphanius traveled the country with Poroshenko, showing the document off to parishioners and, in fact, campaigning for Poroshenko’s reelection.
In late January, Epiphanius visited a large forum which Poroshenko organized to officially announce his candidacy for president. Critics began to say that the Orthodox Church of Ukraine showed unanimous support of those in power, much like the Russian Orthodox Church does in Russia.
But Filaret came to the party forum of one of Poroshenko’s challengers, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. It was the first sign that Epiphanius was acting entirely separately from his former mentor.
Both Poroshenko and Tymoshenko lost the election to political newcomer Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who is a non-religious Jew. This gave hope that the Orthodox Church of Ukraine would have true independence from those in power.
President Petro Poroshenko (R) speaks to parishioners in St. Michael Cathedral in Zhytomyr, standing next to Patriarch Emeritus Filaret (L) on Jan 17, 2019. (Oleg Petrasiuk)
New parishes
Rev. Sergiy joined Filaret’s church in 2014, leaving the Moscow-led Orthodox church after Russia launched its war against Ukraine. That year, many Ukrainian Orthodox believers shifted from pro-Russian churches to Filaret’s Ukrainian one because it openly supporter the pro-Western EuroMaidan Revolution and prayed for Ukrainian soldiers fighting against Russian aggression.
The creation of the canonical Orthodox Church of Ukraine intensified the shift of parishes away from the Moscow Patriarchate, whose priests sometimes refused to read prayers over the bodies of Ukrainian soldiers killed in the war. In some cases, they also called the war “fratricidal.”
More than 530 Orthodox parishes and monasteries have joined the Ukrainian church since it was created.
But in April and May, these shifts nearly stopped, Sagan said, as a result of an unclear situation: who would govern the new church — Epiphanius or Filaret?
“Many didn’t want to come under the control of Filaret,” Sagan said. “When it became clear that Filaret was leaving and Epiphanius would remain the only head of the church, the transitions resumed.”
Property issues
On June 21, Filaret sent a letter to Interior Minister Arsen Avakov complaining that the Orthodox Church in Ukraine’s was seizing churches and monasteries belonging to Kyiv Patriarchate.
On June 25, he claimed that new attacks will come soon, including attempts to take over the Volodymyrsky Cathedral. Filaret claims the Kyiv Patriarchy still exists and has a Holy Synod with five bishops. Filaret has called on the parishes to leave the Orthodox Church of Ukraine and join his church.
Sagan said the situation is legally ambiguous here. Although the Ministry of Culture has already abolished the statute of the Kyiv Patriarchate, the legal entity of the Kyiv Patriarchate still exists in the state registries. This gives Filaret a way to demand control over churches and monasteries that used to belong to his former church, even though this church no longer exists.
But the individual churches’ religious communities and monasteries’ monks should have the final say here, as they own the churches under Ukrainian law. Filaret’s recent attempts to take control of one monastery in Kyiv and one cathedral in Odesa using his loyalists have failed.
Sagan said this all may lead to long legal disputes between Filaret and the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. If he doesn’t change his stance, Filaret will likely be excluded from the Orthodox Church of Ukraine and remain in his marginalized Kyiv Patriarchy.
But that would hardly undermine the new church. Constantinople, which broke with Russian Orthodoxy because of Ukraine, would not take the tomos away after so much has been put at stake, Sagan said.
“After we received tomos — after this child, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, was born — Ukrainians will not allow it die,” Rev. Sergiy said.
A woman prays in the crowd inside St. Volodymyr’s cathedral as Patriarchs of Ukrainian Orthodox church Filarets is praying on Willow Sunday on April 24, 2016. (Volodymyr Petrov)
