List of bishops of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This is the list of the bishops of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church.
This article needs additional citations for verification. (November 2022) |
The Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church made its first deliberate attempt since 1686 to regain its independency from Moscow Patriarchate in 1919. However, no bishops were willing to lead the church. Therefore, the church decided to establish own bishops as they did in Early Christianity (see Consecration in Eastern Christianity). This did not solve an issue of legitimate bishops and those consecrated were labeled as self-consecrated or of the Lypkivsky's consecration. Nonetheless, most of the bishops were eventually persecuted by the Soviet regime as nationalistic and the church was liquidated by 1937.
The second attempt was taken by clergy of Polish Orthodox Church in 1942 after withdrawal of the Soviet forces as result of the German-Soviet War. The bishops of the Polish Orthodox Church managed to consecrate bishops for the new church but were forced to emigrate after return of the Soviet regime. The emigrated bishops established the Ukrainian church in diaspora and North America which eventually in 1990s joined the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.
Just before dissolution of Soviet Union, in 1989 persecution of Ukrainian religious organizations has eased and Ukrainians started to revive own church. The revival was led by very few local bishops of Russian Orthodox Church and later supported by the Church from diaspora. The new effort was led by a bishop-emeritus of the Russian Orthodox Church Ioann (Bodnarchuk).
In 2018 the church became an integral part of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.