by Sergii Bortnyk, Professor of the Kyiv theological academy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church
On 20 March 2026, Patriarch Filaret, who is associated with a long period in Ukrainian Orthodoxy, passed away. There were two notable instances in his life when, due to his intransigence, the majority of his colleagues and disciples broke away from him. Whilst he had sufficient strength after 1992 to establish a new church structure, the ‘Kyiv Patriarchate’, the structure he revived after 2018 remained, in fact, marginal.
Originally from the Donetsk region (eastern Ukraine), the young Mikhail chose a clerical path from an early age and, immediately after finishing school, entered the Odessa Seminary and subsequently the Moscow Theological Academy. In 1950, whilst still a student at the academy, he took monastic vows.
In fact, he belonged to the generation of Metropolitan Nikodim (Rotov) (1929–1978) – they were born in the same year, and with his support in the early 1960s he pursued a career as a church diplomat, combining his ecclesiastical activities with loyalty to the official line of the Soviet Union. Prior to his appointment to the ecclesiastical see in Kyiv, he had served as both a bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church in Vienna and as rector of the Moscow Theological Academy.
This trait of loyalty to the prevailing state policy, even as the ideological underpinnings of that policy shifted (which was entirely to be expected throughout the more than half a century of the Soviet and post-Soviet eras), is Filaret’s most distinctive characteristic.
During the Leonid Brezhnev’s era (1966–1982), he criticised church dissidents; towards the end of the Soviet era (1989–1991), he opposed attempts to revive the autocephalous movement in Ukraine. But from 1992, shortly after Ukraine gained independence, he won over and soon came to lead the autocephalous movement in Ukraine, adopting the principle that ‘an independent state deserves an independent church’.
This very sense of being inextricably linked to the state led to resistance to the restrictions imposed during the establishment of the new ‘Orthodox Church of Ukraine’ at the turn of 2018–2019. He regarded the autocephaly granted by the Tomos as incomplete and insufficient. By promoting his protégé, Metropolitan Epiphanius, to the position of primate of the newly established structure, he hoped to retain real power within it. But that did not happen.
Whereas in 1992, when the ‘Kyiv Patriarchate’ was established, only two bishops remained with him out of a total of 21 Orthodox hierarchs in Ukraine, by 2019 he was in fact left on his own. For his disciples and followers, canonical recognition by the Ecumenical Patriarchate proved to be more important than personal loyalty to Filaret.
Although Filaret held the title of ‘Honorary Patriarch’ within the OCU, in practice he has operated independently over the last 6–7 years, ordaining as bishops and priests a group of people for the revived ‘Kyiv Patriarchate’ whose ordinations were explicitly not recognised by the OCU.
Five months before his death, Filaret was in fact no longer in control of his own actions. At that time, his inner circle drew up a ‘spiritual testament’ stating that he was the lifelong primate of the Kyiv Patriarchate and did not accept the structure of the OCU. In response, representatives of the OCU, together with state authorities, exerted pressure, which led to a meeting and his formal reconciliation with a group of his former disciples from the OCU.
There is no doubt that Filaret has become a powerful figure in the ecclesiastical and political life of Ukraine over the last 60 years. He has done much to establish autocephaly for the Ukrainian Church. Yet, at the same time, Christ’s statement, ‘My kingdom is not of this world’ (John 18:36), clearly ran counter to Filaret’s life and principles.
