Patriarch Filaret, an Orthodox Christian leader who was a driving force behind the establishment of an independent Ukrainian church and became a symbol of defiance toward Russia, died on Friday. He was 97.
The Orthodox Church of Ukraine said in a statement that Filaret had died from “the exacerbation of chronic diseases.” Ukrainian news outlets reported that he had been hospitalized in Kyiv earlier this month.
President Volodymyr Zelensky called his death a “great loss,” describing him as “one of the most steadfast defenders” of Ukrainian statehood.
“Without the energy, character, and courage of Patriarch Filaret, many of Ukraine’s achievements simply would not have been possible,” he said in a statement.
Orthodox Christianity is the most prevalent religion in Russia and Ukraine, and its branches in both countries belonged to the same hierarchy, under the patriarch in Moscow, for centuries. Filaret ignited a rift that has persisted for decades, a move that he later made clear was part of a broader effort to reinforce an independent Ukrainian state, free of Russian influence.
“This is our right,” he said in 2001. That willingness to stand up to Moscow, which helped to cement his legacy, took on greater significance after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The patriarch was born Mykhailo Antonovich Denysenko on Jan. 23, 1929, in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, most of which Russia now occupies. After his father died fighting in World War II, he decided to devote his life to religion, according to a biography on the Orthodox Church of Ukraine’s website.
He studied at the Odessa Theological Seminary and later the Moscow Theological Academy. In January 1950, he became a monk and assumed the name Filaret. After graduating, he taught at the Moscow Theological Academy before transferring to the Kyiv Theological Seminary in 1957.
Filaret was ordained as a bishop, serving in Egypt, Latvia, Austria and Russia in the 1960s, according to the church biography. He later became an archbishop and was elevated to the rank of metropolitan in 1968.
The Ukrainian church had been under Moscow’s jurisdiction since 1686, when, under pressure from Russia, it abandoned allegiance to Constantinople, the historical seat of the Eastern Orthodox Church, now known as Istanbul. But as the Soviet Union began to fray in the 1980s, so did unity under the Moscow Patriarchate.
Filaret set up a competing Orthodox movement in Ukraine, a move that so angered church leaders in Moscow that he was excommunicated. By the time Ukraine gained independence in 1991, his splinter branch had attracted many Ukrainian believers and even some ethnic Russians.
It asserted itself more in the years that followed, and Moscow’s 2014 invasion of Crimea galvanized the movement for a branch fully independent from the Russian Orthodox Church. It formally became independent as the Orthodox Church of Ukraine in 2019, outraging Russian political and religious leaders.
Still, the branch in Ukraine that remained subordinate to Moscow continued to enjoy deep loyalty, even as many Ukrainians came to see it as a tool of Russian foreign policy. For years, the Russia-aligned church made no secret of its desire to unite the Ukrainian branches under the patriarchate in Moscow, which would give it control of the Slavic world’s holiest Orthodox sites and the allegiance of millions of believers in Ukraine.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 brought the rift to a head. It accelerated what had been a gradual rejection by many Ukrainians of a church that answered to Moscow — and it gave the authorities in Kyiv a target.
They arrested dozens of priests and monks, accusing them of spying for the Kremlin and helping to direct Russian airstrikes. They ordered the Russia-aligned church to vacate the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra monastery, one of the faith’s holiest sites, and moved to ban the branch itself.
Filaret was less visible in recent years, partly because of a conflict with the leadership of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which led to Filaret trying to lead another breakaway movement. That move, which critics called a power grab, failed to gain widespread support and made him a villain to some Ukrainians.
Upon his death, several tributes alluded to those controversies while praising Filaret’s role in Ukrainian history, one that earned him the state title “Hero of Ukraine.”
His life “included moments of great rise and periods of sharp contradictions, support and criticism,” Sofiya Fedyna, a Ukrainian lawmaker, wrote on Facebook.
The head of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, Metropolitan Epiphanius I, said in a statement that despite “difficult events,” he had always honored the patriarch’s contributions and enjoyed a recent meeting with him.
Epiphanius I presided over a memorial service on Saturday at St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery in Kyiv, where the patriarch’s coffin was to remain for viewing until his funeral and burial on Sunday. Epiphanius drew a clear link between Filaret’s work and the war against Russia.
“All of us here,” he told those gathered, “with our prayer, our respect and gratitude for the good deeds that the late His Holiness did, testify: The Russian world, as an empire of evil, will not prevail.”
Yurii Shyvala, Oleksandr Chubko and Andrew E. Kramer contributed reporting.
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