Orthodoxy in Ukraine

Orthodox Christianity in Ukraine is older than the Russian and Ukrainian nations themselves. It begins at the waters of the Dnieper in 988, and its history touches every local Church of our communion. Today, two bodies claim to be the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. On this question, orthodox.faith follows the position of the Serbian Orthodox Church: the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under His Beatitude Metropolitan Onufry of Kiev is the canonical Church in Ukraine, and the Orthodox Church of Ukraine under Metropolitan Epiphanius is not recognized. At the same time, we remain in full communion with the Ecumenical Patriarchate and with the Churches that have recognized it.

From the baptism of Kiev to 1686

In 988, Prince Vladimir of Kiev received baptism and brought his people into the faith of Constantinople. The Metropolis of Kiev and All Rus was for centuries a metropolis of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, with its primates mostly sent from Constantinople. After the Mongol devastation of Kiev in 1240, the metropolitans moved north, first to Vladimir and then to Moscow, while the western lands of Rus came under Lithuania and Poland. In 1448, Moscow elected its own metropolitan without Constantinople, and from 1458 a separate Metropolis of Kiev remained under the Ecumenical Patriarchate for the Orthodox of the Polish-Lithuanian realm.

The Union of Brest (1596) took most of the Kievan hierarchy into union with Rome. The Orthodox faithful, led by the lay brotherhoods and the Cossacks, kept the faith, and in 1620 Patriarch Theophanes of Jerusalem restored an Orthodox hierarchy in Kiev. Under Metropolitan Peter Mogila (1633 to 1646), Kiev became a great center of Orthodox learning for the whole Slavic world.

In 1686, after left-bank Ukraine and Kiev passed under the Tsar, Patriarch Dionysius IV of Constantinople issued letters allowing the Patriarch of Moscow to consecrate the Metropolitan of Kiev. For three centuries, the Metropolis of Kiev was then part of the Russian Church. The meaning of these letters is now the heart of the dispute: Moscow reads them as a transfer of jurisdiction, while Constantinople, in 2018, declared that they had granted only a temporary permission.

The twentieth century

In 1921, a Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church was proclaimed in Kiev without bishops, its first hierarchs being “consecrated” by priests and laymen. It was suppressed by the Soviet state and survived in the diaspora. In 1990, as the Soviet Union came apart, the Patriarchate of Moscow granted its Ukrainian Exarchate self-government as the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. In 1992, its primate, Metropolitan Filaret, was refused autocephaly, left the canonical Church and founded the so-called Kiev Patriarchate. He was deposed by the bishops of his own Church in 1992 and anathematized by the Russian Church in 1997, sanctions that all the local Churches then accepted. From 1992, Metropolitan Volodymyr (Sabodan) led the canonical Church; Metropolitan Onufry succeeded him in 2014.

The Tomos of 2019 and the response of the Churches

In October 2018, the Holy Synod of Constantinople restored Filaret and the hierarch of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Church to their rank and revoked the letters of 1686. In December 2018, a council in Kiev united their followers, with two bishops of the canonical Church, as the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, and on January 6, 2019, the Ecumenical Patriarch granted it a tomos of autocephaly. The Russian Church broke communion with Constantinople in October 2018.

Four Churches have since recognized the Orthodox Church of Ukraine: Constantinople, Alexandria, Greece and Cyprus. The Serbian Orthodox Church, with Antioch, Jerusalem, Romania, Bulgaria, Georgia, Poland, Albania and the Czech Lands and Slovakia, has not. The Holy Synod of the Serbian Church declared that it does not recognize the new body nor concelebrate with its hierarchs, whose ordinations it regards as lacking canonical foundation, while it maintains communion with Constantinople and calls for the question to be resolved by a pan-Orthodox council. orthodox.faith follows this position.

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church since 2022

After the Russian invasion of February 2022, Metropolitan Onufry condemned the war as the sin of Cain. On May 27, 2022, the council of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church at the Feofania monastery declared its full self-government and independence, removed from its statute every provision linking it to Moscow, and ceased commemorating the Patriarch of Moscow in most of its dioceses. Its faithful and clergy have nonetheless faced heavy pressure: the law adopted in August 2024 against religious organizations affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church, proceedings by the State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience to terminate the Kiev Metropolis (still before the courts in 2026), the loss of many parishes and cathedrals, and, in July 2025, the termination of Metropolitan Onufry’s Ukrainian citizenship by presidential decree.

We pray for the peace of Ukraine, for its suffering people, and for the healing of this division among the faithful of the one baptism of Kiev.

The two bodies compared

Ukrainian Orthodox in North America

In North America, most Ukrainian Orthodox parishes belong to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada. Both are canonical eparchies of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, members of the Assemblies of Bishops, and in communion with all the local Churches. Their parishes appear in our directory of churches.

Documents

• Letters of Patriarch Dionysius IV of Constantinople on the Metropolis of Kiev (1686)
• Decision of the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate (October 11, 2018)
• Tomos of autocephaly of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (January 6, 2019)
• Statements of the Holy Synod and Holy Assembly of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church on the Church in Ukraine (2018 and 2019)
• Resolution of the Council of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church at Feofania (May 27, 2022)