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By Fred Weir
Correspondent, csmonitor.com
Kyiv, Ukraine
For nearly three decades, Mykhailo Denysenko, best
known today as Patriarch Filaret, has waged a battle to unite Ukraine’s
25 million Orthodox believers under a single Ukrainian church aligned
with an independent Ukraine. His primary obstacle has been the Ukrainian
Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP), which is home to
the lion’s share of Ukraine’s divided Orthodox communion.
At its
peak last year, Patriarch Filaret’s Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the
Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC-KP) had approximately a third of Ukrainian
believers. And time and historical dynamics certainly appeared to be on
Patriarch Filaret’s side to consolidate the rest.
But that all got
turned on its ear last year when the struggle between the Kyiv- and
Moscow-aligned patriarchates became ensnared in Ukraine’s presidential
politics.
Then-President Petro Poroshenko sponsored the creation of an independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine
(OCU), made “canonical” by a patriarchal charter issued by Patriarch
Bartholomew of Constantinople. The problem was that Mr. Poroshenko made
his sponsorship of the new church into a central plank of his reelection
campaign, which focused heavily on the patriotic themes of “Army!
Language! Faith!” Patriarch Filaret now complains that he was
strong-armed into folding his own hard-won parishes into the new church,
accepting the title of “honorary patriarch,” and even appearing at
election events to campaign for Mr. Poroshenko.
Come the election, Ukrainian voters overwhelmingly rejected Mr. Poroshenko, and elected Volodymyr Zelenskiy,
a Russian-speaking TV personality who downplayed hyper-patriotism and
seemed to call for social peace and reconciliation. That appears to have
put the brakes on momentum for a united Ukrainian church.
But
in a silver lining, it also brought a halt to the parish-by-parish
battle for control that had been shaping up under Mr. Poroshenko. Where
before communities were being torn in half
over whether to maintain ties with the Moscow-affiliated church or to
reorient to the Kyiv-affiliated one, the frustration of Patriarch
Filaret’s vision also meant a return to a peaceful status quo.
“When
Poroshenko lost, the turmoil basically stopped,” says Vadim Karasyov,
director of the independent Institute of Global Strategies in Kyiv.
“There have been no parishes joining the new church since then, and
things have quieted down for the time being.”
Mixing church and state
In three separate interviews with the Monitor
over the past five years, Patriarch Filaret has outlined his purposes
and his determination to bring the country’s divided Orthodox believers
into a single church.
But today, after the charter (or tomos)
from Patriarch Bartholomew, who is considered “first among equals” in
the world’s 14 independent Orthodox religious communities, the patriarch
is sidelined, angry, and waging a bitter legal battle to regain control of his church.
From
the splendor of his Kyiv mansion, Patriarch Filaret now claims that he
was deceived by Mr. Poroshenko, and by the honorary patriarch’s former
deputy and new primate of the OCU, Metropolitan Epiphany. He now says
that he did not understand that the tomos from Constantinople
would place his independent Ukrainian church under the control of a
foreign patriarch, even if he is in Constantinople rather than Moscow.
“Poroshenko interfered in church affairs. He made a deal we were ignorant of,” says Patriarch Filaret.
“Had we known that the tomos would have this character, we would never have agreed to it,” he says. “This tomos just changed one form of dependence for another. When we didn’t have the tomos,
we were truly independent, even if we weren’t recognized. Now this new
church headed by Epiphany may be autocephalous in the eyes of
Constantinople, but all the other 13 Orthodox communities in the world
still do not recognize it. ... They did not keep their word. Poroshenko
and Epiphany deceived me. Before all this, the Kyiv patriarchate was
united, independent, and strong. Now it is divided, and only the Moscow
patriarchate is happy.”
Fred Weir
He complains that
the new status places the huge and influential Ukrainian diaspora under
control of Constantinople, and limits the ability of the Ukrainian
church to express its loyalty to the Ukrainian state. Patriarch Filaret
says the cause of unifying Ukrainian believers has suffered a bad
setback due to political meddling.
“If
our Ukrainian Orthodox believers were united, it would be the second
largest Orthodox community in the world, after Russia,” he says. “And
Ukraine, as a state, will only be genuinely independent when it has an
independent church. We will go on fighting for that.”
But
religious scholars argue that church politics has always moved at a
glacial pace, and that the new Ukrainian church created by the charter
from Constantinople will survive and gradually grow. Once it has united
most Ukrainian believers under one roof – a process that might take
decades, or even centuries – it will be granted the right to have its
own patriarch.
“Filaret is a great personage. Until recently, he
was above criticism,” says Yevgeny Kharkovchenko, a religious scholar at
Taras Shevchenko University in Kyiv. “But from the point of view of
Ukrainian experts, the tomos is a canonical document” that makes
the new Ukrainian church truly autocephalous, or independent in a way
that is recognized under church laws. “Whether it is under a patriarch,
or a metropolitan [subordinate to the patriarch in Constantinople], is
just a detail.”
He says it’s
impossible to know what was privately agreed between Patriarch Filaret,
Metropolitan Epiphany, and Mr. Poroshenko, but that Patriarch Filaret
should have known what he was doing when he took off his patriarch’s hat
and accepted the title of “honorary patriarch.”
An end to the fight over parishes?
The
new government under President Zelenskiy is unlikely to intervene in
church affairs as its predecessor did, which will allow the process of
Ukrainian believers choosing which church they want to affiliate with to
proceed in a normal, peaceful manner, says Mr. Kharkovchenko.
“If you exist, go on developing by yourself without any state interference,” is Mr. Zelenskiy’s attitude, he says.
“There
are now two different Orthodox communities in Ukraine, two different
spheres of influence – Moscow and Constantinople – and both will carry
on. Maybe Moscow will grant autocephaly to the UOC-MP, and allow it to
be truly independent?” Mr. Kharkovchenko adds. “In any case, there is no
longer any place between these two for Filaret.”
That appears to suit the heads of the UOC-MP, who have always denied any links with Moscow other than spiritual affiliation.
The
Rev. Nikolai Danilevich, deputy head of external relations for the
UOC-MP, says that cases of “raiding” of the church’s parishes by
proponents of the new autocephalous church have dropped to almost none
since Mr. Zelenskiy’s election. Some parishes that had switched under
pressure have returned to the Moscow-affiliated church, he says.
“All this talk of autocephaly has stopped. You
don’t seen anything in the media about it anymore,” Father Nikolai says.
“We don’t want or need any privileges. We want the authorities to treat
all churches as equally on the basis of law and order. Over the past
five years we saw a lot of things that were far from that, but the
atmosphere in the country has now become much better, much healthier.
...
“We wish we didn’t even have to know the name of whomever
happens to be prime minister or president at any given moment, as it is
in other parts of the world. But, alas, we still don’t have that
luxury.”
