On March 20, 2026, at the age of 97, His Beatitude Honorary Patriarch of Kyiv and All Rus-Ukraine Filaret fell asleep in the Lord following complications from chronic illnesses.
This was reported by the Kyiv Metropolis of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.
His Beatitude Honorary Patriarch of Kyiv and All Rus-Ukraine Filaret, in the world Mykhailo Denysenko, was born in 1929 in Donetsk Oblast.
He studied at the Odesa Theological Seminary and at the Moscow Theological Academy.
At the age of 21, he was tonsured as a monk.
From 1958, he served in Ukraine. In total, he led the Ukrainian Church, first as the exarchate of the Moscow Patriarchate, and later, after breaking with the Russian Orthodox Church, as the head of the unrecognized Ukrainian Church for half a century.
In connection with the proclamation of the restoration of Ukraine’s independence, he set a course toward establishing an independent church of the Kyiv Patriarchate.
During his tenure, St. Michael’s Cathedral was built, higher theological educational institutions were established. He raised a generation of church religious leaders.
By the time Ukraine obtained autocephalous status, the church of the Kyiv Patriarchate under his leadership numbered 5,000 parishes.
Since June 2019, he had been a retired hierarch of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.
For his ecclesiastical, public, and peacebuilding activity, he was awarded numerous church and state honors. In January 2019, he received the highest state title, Hero of Ukraine.
Patriarch Filaret was among those who dared to speak about autocephaly at a time when doing so required not only conviction, but also personal courage.
His name became a symbol of change, ecclesiastical, social, and ideological.
At the same time, the figure of the Ukrainian patriarch was never unequivocal.
Different stages of Filaret’s activity provoked debate and criticism, which only underscores the complexity and significance of his personality in the modern history of Ukrainian Orthodoxy.
In any case, the name of Patriarch Filaret will forever remain associated with the process of restoring the independent path of the Ukrainian Church.
