Patriarch Filaret (secular name Mykhailo Antonovych Denysenko; Ukrainian: Михайло Антонович Денисенко; 23 January 1929 – 20 March 2026) was a Ukrainian religious leader, serving as the primate and Patriarch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church–Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC–KP). The Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), which he left in 2019, viewed him as the Honorary Patriarch emeritus, while the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople recognized him as a former Metropolitan of Kyiv.
Denysenko was the Metropolitan of Kiev and the Exarch of Ukraine in the Patriarchate of Moscow (1966–1992). After joining the Kyiv Patriarchate, he was defrocked and in 1997 excommunicated by the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC). On 11 October 2018, the Patriarchate of Constantinople reinstated him in church communion. However, while restored to the episcopate, the Ecumenical Patriarchate never recognised him as Patriarch and views him as the former Metropolitan of Kyiv. On 15 December 2018, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate united with the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church and some members of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church–Moscow Patriarchate (UOC–MP) into the Orthodox Church of Ukraine; the Ukrainian Orthodox Church–Kyiv Patriarchate thus ceased to exist. On 20 June 2019, however, a conflict between Filaret and the new metropolitan of the OCU, Epiphanius of Kyiv, over details of the unification lead to Filaret declaring continuation of the UOC–KP with himself as the metropolitan. The continued UOC–KP is not currently recognized by any of the major Eastern Orthodox churches, nor the Government of Ukraine.
Mykhailo Denysenko was born on 23 January 1929, into a worker's family in the village of Blahodatne in the Amvrosiivsky Raion (district), now in the Donetsk Oblast (province) in Eastern Ukraine. His parents were Anton and Melania Denysenko. As a teenager, Mykhailo was greatly affected by his father's death on the frontline in 1943, which contributed to his turn to religion. Starting from 1946, he obtained his theological education at the Odesa Seminary (Moscow Patriarchate) and the Moscow Theological Academy where he became a close associate of Patriarch Alexius I of Moscow. He took monastic vows in 1950 assuming the monastic name Filaret and was ordained hierodeacon in January 1950 and priest in June 1951. After his graduation he stayed at the Moscow Theological Academy as a professor (from 1952) and Senior Assistant to the Academy inspector, simultaneously serving as archpriest of Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius. In 1956, he was appointed Inspector of the Theological Seminary in Saratov and elevated to the rank of hegumen. In 1957, he was appointed Inspector of the Kyiv Theological Seminary. In July 1958, he was further elevated to the rank of Archimandrite and appointed seminary rector.
Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church
In 1960, Filaret was appointed manager of the Ukrainian exarchate of the ROC and became prior of St Volodymyr's Cathedral in Kyiv. In 1961, Filaret served in the ROC mission to the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria. In January 1962, Filaret was elected vicar Bishop of the Leningrad Eparchy and, in February, was ordained bishop in Leningrad by Metropolitan Pimen (later Moscow Patriarch) and other bishops. Filaret was appointed to several diplomatic missions of the Russian Orthodox Church and from 1962 to 1964 served as ROC Bishop of Vienna and Austria. In 1964, he returned to Moscow as the Bishop of Dmitrov and rector of the Moscow Theological Academy and Seminary.
In 1966, he became archbishop of Kyiv and Halych. At that time he also became a permanent member of the Holy Synod, the highest collegiate body of the Russian Orthodox Church, which has the responsibility of electing the Moscow Patriarch. Two years later, Filaret became Metropolitan of Kyiv and Galicia, which was the second-highest position in the church hierarchy after the Patriarch.
As the new head of Ukrainian Exarchate, Filaret inherited a church, which had been severely damaged by Nikita Khrushchev's anti-religious campaign. In order to revive spiritual life in Ukrainian lands and restore the local church autonomy, he promoted the causes of religious education and publication of prayer books in Ukrainian language before his leadership in Moscow. As a result of Filaret's initiatives, the exarchate started publishing a magazine and religious books in Ukrainian. Ukrainian language was used by the metropolitan in his Christmas and Easter addresses, and priests also received education in Ukrainian. Filaret explained the necessity of Ukrainian-language religious publications with the need to reduce the risk of local faithful in Galicia and Transcarpathia being alienated from the Russian Orthodox Church and rejoining the Greek Catholics. As late as October 1989, Filaret was still saying, "The Uniates will never be legalized in our country."
On 3 May 1990, Patriarch Pimen of Moscow died and, the same day, Filaret became the locum tenens of the Russian Orthodox Church. Filaret lost the election to the post of Patriarch of Moscow receiving less votes than his competitors, Rostov and Novocherkassk metropolitan Volodymyr Sabodan and Leningrad and Novgorod metropolitan Alexey Ridiger, the eventual winner. Retrospectively, in 2019, Filaret declared "it was not by chance that I was not elected. The Lord prepared me for Ukraine".
In July 1990, Filaret was elected head of the newly established Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) as part of ROC. On 27 October 1990, in a ceremony at St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, the newly elected Patriarch Alexei II handed to Metropolitan Filaret a tomos granting "independence in self government" (the tomos did not use either of the words "autonomy" or "autocephaly"), and enthroned him, heretofore "Metropolitan of Kyiv", as "Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Ukraine". In November 1990, the first synod of UOC adopted its statute.
In 1992, the Russian Orthodox priest and Soviet dissident Fr. Gleb Yakunin accused Exarch Filaret of having been an informer for the KGB. Father Gleb stated that he had seen KGB files which listed Exarch Filaret's codename as Antonov. The fact of cooperation with KGB was mentioned by people's deputies of Ukraine on 20 January 1992 when they came out with an official statement. According to internal KGB documents, tasks the KGB assigned Filaret as an agent included promoting Soviet positions and candidates in the World Council of Churches (WCC), the Christian Peace Conference (CPC) and other international bodies, and, by the 1980s, backing the Soviet authorities' attempts to prevent the long-suppressed Ukrainian Catholic Church (disparagingly called 'Uniates') from regaining an open existence, and backing state attempts to prevent religious believers demanding their rights as glasnost and perestroika opened up the sphere of public debate. In 2018, Filaret declared in an interview with Radio Liberty that he, like all bishops under communism, had to have contacts with the KGB. In 2019, he declared every bishop of the Moscow Patriarchate had to have contact with the KGB, even when it came to appoint a bishop. He added that he had been trained by the Politburo and Patriarch Alexy by the KGB.
Creation of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Kyiv Patriarchate
Following Ukraine's declaration of independence from the Soviet Union on 24 August 1991, a national sobor of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church was held from 1–3 November. At the sobor, the voting delegates, (who included all UOC bishops, clergy and lay delegates from each diocese; a delegate from each monastery and seminary, and recognized lay brotherhood) unanimously passed a resolution stating that henceforth the UOC would operate as an autocephalous church. A separate resolution expressed confidence in Filaret as the Primate of the UOC.
Filaret convened an assembly at the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra in January 1992 that adopted a request of autocephaly for Ukrainians to the Moscow Patriarch.
In March–April 1992, the Hierarchical Council of the Russian Orthodox Church met with a single agenda item: to consider the resolution passed by the UOC Sobor four months earlier. Although the issue itself was not discussed, Filaret was asked to resign. On the second day of the meeting, Metropolitan Filaret agreed to submit his resignation to the UOC Synod, and the ROC Synod passed a resolution which stated: