Patriarch Filaret, trailblazer for Ukrainian church independence, dies at 97
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Patriarch Emeritus Filaret, one of the leaders of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, has passed away, Metropolitan Epiphanius, head of the church, said on March 20.
"Today there is deep sorrow and grief in my heart, as in the hearts of many Ukrainians, for today the earthly journey of His Holiness Patriarch Filaret has come to an end," Epiphanius wrote on Facebook. "We will always remember Patriarch Filaret’s guidance on the importance of preserving the unity of the Ukrainian Church around the Kyiv See."
Serhiy Dmitriev, a priest and deputy head of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine's charity department, said that Filaret was the founder of an independent Ukrainian church.
"For me, he was a leader who, regardless of all obstacles, consistently built a Ukrainian church in the difficult conditions of an information war," he told the Kyiv Independent.
Filaret's health had deteriorated in recent years but he had occasionally conducted services at Kyiv's St Volodymyr Cathedral until 2025. He was hospitalized on March 9.
Filaret, also known as Mykhailo Denysenko, was born into a coalminer's family in 1929 in Donetsk Oblast.
He was the metropolitan of Kyiv and leader of the Ukrainian church as part of the Russian Orthodox Church from 1966 to 1992. He was also the locum tenens, or provisional leader, of the Russian Orthodox Church and a candidate for patriarch of Moscow in 1990.
Filaret broke with the Russian Orthodox Church and co-founded the unrecognized Kyiv Patriarchate in 1992 and was the patriarch of Ukraine from 1995 to 2018. He was involved in a bitter standoff with the Russian church, which anathematized and demonized him.
The Kyiv Patriarchate was opposed to the Russian aggression that started in 2014 and supported the Ukrainian army.
"If the Kyiv Patriarchate had not existed, I don't know what Russia's war would have led to," Dmitriev said. "This church was one of the tools for resisting Russian aggression."
Dmitriev was previously a priest of the Moscow-affiliated church in Ukraine but switched to the Kyiv Patriarchate in 2014 due to Russia's war against Ukraine and worked with Filaret.
"He knew every detail and got deeply involved in everything despite his old age," Dmitriev said about his cooperation with Filaret. "He was clear-minded and had good ideas."
In 2018 the Kyiv Patriarchate was transformed into the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, led by Metropolitan Epiphanius, and was officially recognized by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. Filaret became the patriarch emeritus of the new church — an honorary title without any real power — although the title is not recognized by Constantinople.
Filaret became involved in a power struggle with Epiphanius over the new church in 2019, seeking to resurrect the Kyiv Patriarchate as an entity separate from the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. He also accused Constantinople of trying to limit the Ukrainian church's independence.
However, Filaret's attempts to re-establish his own church were eventually unsuccessful.
According to Dmitriev, Filaret expected a full-scale war with Russia before it began in 2022.
"Filaret said in 2015 or 2016 that Russia would cease to exist as a state by 2030," Dmitriev said. "He said there would be a great war, and Russia would lose it."
