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- The material from this article should be included in Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Kiev Patriarchy and History of Christianity in Ukraine.
| Filaret Denysenko |
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Patriarch Filaret, secular name Mykhailo Denysenko, officially, His Holiness, the Patriarch of Kiev and All Rus’ - Ukraine Filaret, (born 23 January, 1929) is the head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Kiev Patriarchy (UOC-KP), one of two major orthodox churches in Ukraine, however viewed "uncanonical" by the Eastern Orthodox communion. He was elected and enthroned as an UOC-KP leader in October, 1995. From 1966 until 1991, he was a Metropolitan of Kiev and All Ukraine of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) under the Moscow Patriarchy, Filaret was defrocked by the ROC in 1992, and finally excommunicated in 1997 "for schismatic activities".
Filaret was one of the most influential hierarchs of the ROC where the office of Metropolitan of Kiev is highly regarded. With the ailing physical condition of Pimen I, the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus', Filaret personally oversaw the preparation and celebration of the Baptism of Rus'. Millennium anniversary in 1988, an event that redefined the relationship between the Soviet state and the church and was marked with return of numerous church building to the ROC. As an ROC leader in Ukraine, he actively and publicly supported the suppression of Ukrainian churches that refused to associate with the ROC, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, in accordance with the official position of the ROC which benefited from the Ukrainian churches' suppressed condition. Upon the death of Patriarch Pimen I in 1990, Filaret was widely viewed as a frontrunner in the patriarchal election, especially when, with the election still pending, he became a patriarchal locum tenens.
The election turned out to be bitter. In the rivarly among the Church hierarchs, Filaret lost through allegations of improper financial dealings and having a common-law wife and children, in contravention of his monastic vows. After losing the 1990 election for the Patriarch of Moscow to Metropolitan Alexius (Alexey Ridiger) of Leningrad and Novgorod, who became enthroned as Patriarch Alexius II, disgruntled Filaret initiated the creation of a new Ukrainian Church through the separation of the ROC's Ukrainian Metropolitan's see from the Moscow Patriarchy. The creation of the new church was proclaimed in 1992 under the name of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Kiev Patriarchy via unilateral changing of the ecclestical link from Moscow to another recently revived church, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church.
This move generated much controversy in both church and secular affairs and most of the high-ranking clergy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church refused to follow Filaret into the schism. In June, 1992, the ROC, unable to prevent the creation of what it viewed as a "schismatic church" in newly independent Ukraine, helped to organize a synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, where Filaret was defrocked and offically ousted. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church also retained an autonomous status (one step short of full autocephaly) granted to it in 1990 under the ecclestical link to the Patriarch of Moscow
The disputes, sometimes violent, ensued between the clergy and the followers of the churches for the control over the church property, and, with the relationship between Filaret and ROC hierarch already having turned bitter, the Russian Orthodox Church later excommunicated Filaret (1997) claiming his actions constituted the schism, a major crime in the Eastern Orthodoxy.
However, due to the complexities of affairs within Ukrainian Orthodoxy, as well as controversies surrounding his personality including rumors that reached the press about Filaret having been recruited in the past as a KGB agent code-named "Antonov", he was not able to become the formal leader of the church until 1995.