Patriarch Mstyslav (Skrypnyk)

Patriarch Mstyslav (Skrypnyk) (1898-1993)

Mstyslav may be spelt Mistislav, Mystyslav.

Early life of Stepan Skrypnyk

In 1898, Stepan Skrypnyk was born in Poltava, Ukraine, at that time in the Russian Empire. He was a nephew of Symon Petliura, a prominent Ukrainian military and political figure. However, his family also included many priests and bishops.

Being raised in a firmly believing Orthodox Christian family, he was frequently at worship in both parish Temples and monasteries, and a participant in pilgrimages. He was familiar with the monastic life in Ukraine, and of the history of the Kyiv Metropolitanate.

Early education ; military service

Stepan first attended the "lower seminary" (an ecclesial version of the gymnasium) . He then attended the Poltava First Classical Gymnasium and prepared for a military career throughout his youth. During the years of World War I, he studied at the Officers’ School in Orenburg, located near the Russian Ural Mountains, and by the Ural River which marks the division between Europe and Asia.

Following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, Stepan became a diplomatic courier for the army of the Ukrainian People’s Republic. He then served as first sergeant for special missions for his uncle, Symon Petliura. Mr. Petliura became the President of the Ukrainian National Republic, and he advocated for a Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church.

In the military

In the early 1920s, Stepan was incarcerated by Poland in an internment camp in Kalisz. Later, he briefly settled in Volhynia, but he had to leave under the pressure of the Polish authorities. He then moved to Galicia, and he became an activist for the Ukrainian movement in Poland which controlled the ethnically Ukrainian territories of Galicia and Volhynia between the world wars.

Displacement ; further education ; political activity

Following his attendance at the Warsaw School of Political Sciences, on 16 November, 1930, Stepan was elected as ambassador to the Polish "Sejm" (Parliament) (his nomination was made by the Polish-Ukrainian-Czech-German Volyn united public election committee on the list of the Non-Party Bloc of Cooperation with the Government (BBWR)).

He became a member of the Volyn Parliamentary Group, and he served as the Secretary of the Sejm. The political credo was loyalty to the authorities, federalism, the struggle against communism and nationalism.

From 1932, he was chairman of the Rivne Society "Ukrainian School", a member of the Volyn Eparchial Council. He served there until 1939.

Stepan Skrypnyk at the Sejm

He also served as vice-mayor of Rivne (Rovno) (now in Ukraine) in the 1930s. In this period, Stepan Skrypnyk collaborated with the Polish "voivode" (warlord) of Volhynia, Henryk Józewski in his Prometheist policies supporting moderate Ukrainians as a counterbalance to Soviet communism. As he served in the "Sejm", Stepan Skrypnyk attained the reputation of being the defender of the Ukrainian minority rights in Poland (especially of the Orthodox Christian Faith in the predominantly Orthodox Volhynia) against the assimilationist policies (Polonisation) of the Polish authorities.

Following the death of his wife, and the Nazi-German occupation in 1941-1944, Stepan Skrypnyk dedicated the rest of his life to the development of an autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church. An attempt had been made to establish such a church by Metropolitan Vasily Lypkivsky, but it self-dissolved under extreme Soviet pressure in 1933. This was followed by the systematic killing of much of the intelligentsia by the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD). At this time, much of Western Ukraine was under Polish authority.

Metropolitan Dionysii (Waledyński) appointed Metropolitan Polikarp (Sikorski) to head the new UAOC, and at about the same time, a Ukrainian Autonomous Church in Ukraine was established by an assembly at the Pochaiv Monastery.

At the beginning of World War II, Ukrainian life in some Nazi-occupied territories of Poland initially experienced a significant degree of revival, since the Nazi policies pitted the ethnic groups with a historically complicated relationship against each other, giving an upper hand to the Poles or to the Ukrainians in different regions, as the Nazis saw fit.

When the Ukrainian Committee and the Temporary Church Council was formed in Kholm (Chełm), Stepan Skrypnyk was elected a council deputy head (1940).

From August, 1941, Stepan became the publisher of the magazine "Volyn", in which he at one time published the following statement :

 And today, freed by the blood and labour of the German warrior from the terrible shackles of 23 
 years of Muscovite-Jewish Asian captivity, we, Ukrainians, with proudly raised brows, turn to a 
 new Europe, to that Europe that appeared in the brilliant vision of the Great European - Adolf Hitler. 
 We believe in such a Europe, we preach such a Europe, we have been dreaming about such a Europe 
 for 23 years, a sea of the most valuable Ukrainian blood has been shed for such a Europe.

Diaconal ordination, 1942

In April, 1942, Stepan Skrypnyk was ordained to the Holy Diaconate.

Presbyteral ordination, 1942

On 10 April, the Deacon Stepan Skrypnyk was ordained to the Holy Priesthood.

Monastic tonsure, 1942

On 6 May, 1942, the Priest Stepan Skrypnyk was tonsured to be a monk, and he was given the name Mstyslav.

Episcopal ordination, 1942

Very soon after that, Archimandrite Mstyslav (Skrypnyk) was ordained to the Holy Episcopate by the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC). This ordination took place in the Church of Saint Andrew in Kyiv.

Episcopal service

Bishop Mstyslav (Skrypnyk) was assigned to serve as the Bishop of Pereyaslav (Pereyaslav-Khmel’nitskiy), Ukraine.

Later in 1942, the German occupational authorities banned Bishop Mstyslav from the Kyiv General-Governorate. Because he disobeyed the order, Bishop Mstyslav was arrested in Rivne. Because of Gestapo accusations, he spent half a year imprisoned in Chernihiv and Pryluky. He was freed in the spring of 1943, but he was ordered not to leave Kyiv, and he was banned from conducting religious services.

Exile ; move to North America, 1944

In 1944, Bishop Mstyslav (Skrypnyk) moved to Warsaw and later to Germany, where he was the head of the Ukrainian Orthodox eparchies in Hesse and Württemberg.

In 1947, he left for Canada. There, he was elected to be the Archbishop of Winnipeg, Manitoba, and the first resident hierarch of the Ukrainian Greek Orthodox Church (UGOCC).

Bishop Mstyslav, 1948

However, within 2 years, he left the UGOCC because of a conflict about the balance of power between the bishop and the administrators of the church. The focal point of this conflict was between Bishop Mstyslav and Father Semen Sawchuk, who was the administrator of the UGOCC Consistory.

In 1949, Bishop Mstyslav moved to the USA, and joined the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in America (UOCUSA), then headed by Bishop Joseph (Zhuk). At the 1950 Council (Sobor) in New York City, he succeeded in bringing about unification of the UOC in America with the much larger archdiocesan eparchy of Archbishop John (Theodorovych), that is, with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA (UOC of the USA). Archbishop John was elected as metropolitan of the newly united UOC of the USA. Archbishop Mstyslav became his deputy, and the head of the consistory.

Metropolitan Mstyslav in his office in South Bound Brook

In the USA, Bishop Mstyslav began extensive ecclesiastical activity : the building of the Ukrainian Orthodox Centre, with a publishing house, library and seminary in South Bound Brook, New Jersey. After the repose of Metropolitan Nikanor (Abramovych) in 1969, the authority of Bishop Mstyslav was extended to include the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Churches of Europe and Australia.

During his meetings with the Ecumenical Patriarch in 1963 and 1971, he brought up the concern about the canonical recognition of the Ukrainian Diaspora Churches (the UAOC was banned in the USSR, and hence in Soviet Ukraine at that time).

Return to Ukraine : Ukrainian patriarch, 1990

Upon return

In 1990, at the age of 92, he was elected in absentia to be the first Patriarch of Kyiv and all Ukraine of the UAOC.

Patriarch of Ukraine, 1990

Metropolitan Mstyslav (Skrypnyk) was enthroned as Patriarch Mstyslav I (Skrypnyk), on 6 November, 1990 in the Cathedral of Saint Sophia in Kyiv.

Patriarchal service

In 1992, a unification Sobor was convened, which united the UAOC with one part of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate), at that time led by Metropolitan Filaret (Denysenko). Patriarch Mstyslav personally signed and affixed his seal to the merger documents, which formed the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyivan Patriarchate under his leadership.

However, the status of the new church as well as the overall situation with the Orthodox faith in Ukraine became a subject of a wide controversy (see “History of Christianity in Ukraine”), which the patriarch was unable to resolve within his lifetime.

Repose, 1993

Patriarch Mstyslav returned to North America, where he reposed in 1993 at his daughter’s home in Grimsby, Ontario, Canada, at the age of 95.

He was entombed at the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA Centre in South Bound Brook, New Jersey.

Saint Andrew Memorial Church, Saint Andrew Cemetery, South Bound Brook

Tomb of Patriarch Mstyslav (Skrypnyk)

— Bishop of Pereyaslav 1942 (UAOC). See created. Succeeded by : ___.

— Bishop of Hesse and Württemberg 1944-1947 (UAOC). Temporary sees created.

— Archbishop of Winnipeg, Primate of the UGOCC (UOCC) 1947-1949. Preceded by : Archbishop John (Theodorovych) (Acting primate). Succeeded by : Metropolitan Polikarp (Sikorski).

— Patriarch of Kyiv and all Rus-Ukraine (UAOC) 1990-1993. Title created. Succeeded by : Patriarch Dymytriy (Yarema).

— Patriarch of Kyiv and all Rus-Ukraine (UAOC–KP) 1992-1993. Title Created. Succeeded by : Patriarch Volodymyr (Romaniuk).

Reflections

After his repose, the UAOC-KP (Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church - Kyivan Patriarchate) elected Archbishop Volodymyr (Romaniuk) to be patriarch. At the same time, a portion of the UAOC which had broken away after the 1992 union elected Bishop Dymytriy (Yarema) to be the patriarch of a newly-formed UAOC.

As patriarch