OBITUARY: Patriarch Dymytrii of Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (03/05/00)

OBITUARY: Patriarch Dymytrii of Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - Volodymyr Yarema, the second patriarch of Kyiv and All of Ukraine of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC), will forever be known as the person who had to fill the unfillable shoes of the irreplaceable Patriarch Mstyslav. He will also go down in history, however, as the first priest of the Kyiv Metropolia of the Russian Orthodox Church to move to the newly re-established Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, which precipitated the spiritual move away from Moscow and the revitalization of the idea of a Ukrainian Church in the last days of the Soviet Union.

He was a renaissance man who had studied art and music in his younger years, a leader with a developed political conscious who was a member of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists in the 1930s. But he was also a simple and humble man of gentle voice and solemn determination fond of quoting Taras Shevchenko and sharing with listeners stories of his friendship with Patriarch Mstyslav and his encounters with Greek-Catholic Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky while in seminary school. But, above all, he was a religious man, who dedicated his life, albeit later than most, to serving God.

Volodymyr Yarema was born in 1915 in a village in what is today the Krasnienske Voievodstvo of western Poland. He was not born into an Orthodox family. His family raised him in the Greek-Catholic faith, and he studied in a Greek-Catholic seminary before being conscripted into the Red Army during World War II. After the war he returned to his native Halychyna only to watch the Soviet regime ban the Greek-Catholic Church and destroy its leadership.

Bent on becoming a man of the cloth, he opted to join the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), the only Church still allowed to exist in the Soviet Union, and was ordained a priest in 1947. For more than 40 years he served quietly as a parish priest. He was never blacklisted or persecuted and did not spend time in the notorious Soviet concentration camps, although he held very strong opinions on communism and what the system was doing to the Ukrainian nation. A striking feature of his career is that he never attained a higher title and was shifted often from parish to parish, an indication that ROC leaders did not trust the little man with the gentle voice.

In 1989, as it became obvious that the Soviet empire could not be sustained and being given an opportunity to show his allegiance to a Ukrainian Church, he quickly threw his lot in with Patriarch Mstyslav and the UAOC.

The UAOC, established in 1920, had been obliterated by Soviet authorities by the 1930s, but it remained alive in the United States and Canada. In 1989, with the policy of glasnost in full bloom, the Rev. Yarema took the daring step of addressing Kyiv Metropolitan Filaret Denysenko of the ROC with a call for the establishment of a Ukrainian Patriarchate. Knowing that the UAOC was attempting to regain a toehold in Ukraine, Protoihumen Yarema, along with his colleague Ivan Pahula, then did the heretofore unspeakable: they announced their parish would leave the Kyiv Metropolia of the ROC and join the UAOC.

By 1990, with the Soviet Union falling apart, the Rev. Yarema initiated and was a participant in the first All-Ukrainian Sobor of the UAOC, held in Kyiv in 1990, which elected Metropolitan Mstyslav as the first patriarch of Ukraine.

An effort by leaders of the newly formed Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kyiv Patriarchate - organized by Filaret, now the head of that Church - to absorb the UAOC in 1992, during which several UAOC bishops defected to the UOC-KP, was barely repelled. The Church suffered another devastating blow when Patriarch Mstyslav died in 1993.

Within a month the Rev. Yarema, who had spent most of his years as a simple priest in the service of Jesus Christ, was elevated to bishop and then patriarch of the UAOC. As a priest in the UAOC, which he had helped to bring back to life, he did not seek authority or a title. Nor had he sought the helm of the UAOC, but when drafted he agreed to lead.

The era of Patriarch Dymytrii, however, saw a further decline in the Church's fortunes. In 1997 the UOC-KP again ventured into UAOC territory, drawing more bishops and parishes away amid charges that the patriarch and some of his closest bishops had mishandled Church money and had purposely bankrupted the Christian Bank, the Church's financial institution. Weeks after the allegations, the renegade UAOC bishop who had leveled the accusations and organized the revolt within the Church fled to the UOC-KP. Soon afterwards it was discovered that the leading renegade was an original member of Patriarch Filaret's UOC-KP.

In late 1998 the aging Patriarch Dymytrii, his health failing and the day-to-day administration of the Church in the hands of Archbishop Ihor of the Kharkiv-Poltava Eparchy, decided that the future of the Church would be strengthened if it would turn once again to the Ukrainian diaspora, which had maintained the UAOC during nearly 70 years of Communist rule in Ukraine.

He decided to seek closer relations with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the U.S.A., which had recently come under the omophorion of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, hoping the move might eventually lead to recognition of the UAOC as a canonical Church by Constantinople. In December 1998 he visited the United States and after discussions with the UOC-U.S.A. signed an agreement to strengthen frayed ties and to work for a united Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

The decision Patriarch Dymytrii made in his last will and testament to request that the UAOC hierarchy agree to allow Metropolitan Constantine to lead it - which, if carried out, will effectively unite the two Churches - was a tactical move to save the UAOC from further incursions from the larger UOC-KP and the ever-threatening UOC - Moscow Patriarchate.

In doing so, Patriarch Dymytrii again showed that this simple and humble man could do the unexpected and take the initiative, as he had when he had called for a Ukrainian Patriarchate, when he brought his parish over to the UAOC, and when he called for the First All Ukrainian Sobor in 1990.

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