Mstyslaw

Patriarch Mstyslaw 1948

Patriarch Mstyslaw ( Ukrainian Мстислав , maiden name Степан Іванович Скрипник Stepan Skrypnyk Iwanowytsch ; born March 29, ^jul. / 10. April  1898 ^greg. In Poltava , Poltava Governorate , Russian Empire ; † 11. June 1993 in Grimsby , Ontario , Canada ) was a Ukrainian church leader. He was the "Patriarch of Kiev and all of Ukraine" of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church , Primate of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church in the Diaspora .

Stepan Skrypnyk 1920

Life

He was born as Stepan Ivanovich Skrypnyk in the city of Poltava in what is now Ukraine, the son of a deeply religious family. His father Ivan was the descendant of Cossacks of the Mirgorod regiment, as was his mother Marianna Vasylivna Petljura, who was the sister of the future Ukrainian statesman Symon Petljura . Stepan spent his childhood in Poltava, where he graduated from the First Classical Gymnasium .

After graduating from high school he became a student at the officers' school in Orenburg . After the October Revolution in 1917 and the subsequent independence of Ukraine, he volunteered in the army of the Ukrainian People's Republic and served in a cavalry regiment of the Ukrainian army between 1917 and 1921, including 1918 in the Crimea . In July 1918 the Germans arrested him together with his uncle Symon Petljura and imprisoned him for over four months in Kiev's Lukjaniwska prison . After his liberation, he fought again on the war front in the Ukrainian-Soviet War until he was injured in March 1919 . After a stay in the hospital , he became the adjutant of his uncle Symon Petljura, the chief ataman of the Ukrainian army. After 1921 terminates the service in the Ukrainian army, he was after the Polish-Soviet war in an internment camp for soldiers of the People's Republic of Ukraine in the Polish city of Kalisz interned , where he dealt with cultural and educational work. After his release from the camp, he moved to Lutsk , but was arrested by the Polish police in the autumn of 1922 for his social and educational activities and expelled from Volhynia , whereupon he began to study at the Graduate School of Political Science in Warsaw in 1923, which he graduated in 1930. At the same time he graduated from the Free University of Warsaw in 1929 . He married Halychanka Iwanna Witkowyzka and had a son and two daughters. 1930 he was elected as deputy of Volyn and Polesia , in the Polish Sejm , where he campaigned for the rights of the Ukrainian people and the Orthodox Church in Poland. After Soviet troops marched into Lviv , his wife died under unexplained circumstances, after which Skrypnyk decided to remain celibate. He took care of his children and became a monk.

In autumn 1941 he was elected deputy chairman of the Ukrainian Council of Churches in Volhynia. In April 1942 he was ordained a priest and took the monk name Mstyslaw . On May 14, 1942, he was ordained as Bishop of Pereyaslav of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church in St. Andrew's Church in Kiev . Since the German occupation authorities were bothered by his activity and increasing popularity, he was banned from staying in Kiev on August 24, 1942, after which he went to Volhynia to avoid arrest. In October 1942 in Pochayiv he signed the merger with the Autonomous Orthodox Church of Ukraine for the Autocephalous Orthodox Church .

During the German occupation, Mstyslaw in Rivne was the editor of the magazine Wolyn ("Wolhynien"), in which he tried to reach a political compromise with the German occupation authorities on the issue of restoring the Ukrainian statehood. As a result, he published several articles in which he glorified Nazi Germany and Hitler and criticized the communist regime of the Soviet Union. Mstyslaw played a special role here as a factor in stimulating national consciousness in the Ukrainian population of the Reichskommissariat Ukraine , which in turn was an important prerequisite for the beginning of the anti-Nazi resistance movement in Volhynia in 1942/43. On October 12, 1942, he was arrested by the Gestapo in Rivne and imprisoned in Chernihiv , Pryluky, and finally in Kiev. Due to the efforts of the clergy, he was released from prison in April 1943, with a ban on preaching. As the Red Army approached , he first moved to Galicia and then to Poland, where he stayed until the spring of 1944. He then emigrated to Canada in the autumn of 1947 after stays in Austria and Germany .

In the same year he was elected Primate of the Ukrainian Greek Orthodox Church with the title of Bishop of Winnipeg and All Canada. From 1949 he led the Orthodox Church in America. In the United States , he sponsored the construction of St. Andrew Memorial Church in Bowden Brook , New Jersey , near New York . In addition, further spiritual institutions of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, including a museum, a library, an archive, a publishing house with a printer and a training center, were moved there and a cemetery was laid out in the 1950s.

In 1971 he became a primate of the ukr.-orth in the USA. Church chosen for the countries of the west. On June 5, 1990 he was elected Patriarch of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church in Ukraine and abroad, and after the founding of the Ukrainian Church of the Kiev Patriarchate in 1992, he became its patriarch. He died in Grimsby at the age of 95 and was buried in St. Andrew's Cemetery in Bound Brook.

Mstyslaw published numerous articles and was editor of various magazines and collections of works.

Honors

Mstyslaw was awarded an honorary doctorate from Saint Andrew's College in Winnipeg. He also became an honorary member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society in the USA.

Web links

Commons : Stepan Skrypnyk  - collection of images

• Ukraine commemorates centennial of Patriarch Mstyslav's birth Ukrainian Weekly, May 10, 1998 (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} man of firm faith. First Patriarch of the Ukrainian Church Stepan Ivanovych Skrypnyk - Mstyslav on religion.in.ua ; accessed on May 14, 2019 (Ukrainian)
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Patriarch of UAOC Mstyslaw (Skrypnyk) on church.net.ua ; accessed on May 14, 2019 (Ukrainian)
3. ↑ ^{a b} Entry on Mstyslav in the Encyclopedia of the History of Ukraine ; accessed on May 14, 2019 (Ukrainian)
4. ↑ Extract from the journalism “Stepan Skrypnyk and the Wolyn Publishing House” on vchys.com.ua ; accessed on May 16, 2019 (Ukrainian)
5. ^ "Stepan Skrypnyk and the Wolyn Publishing House" Faculty of International Relations; accessed on May 16, 2019 (Ukrainian)
6. ^ Entry on Patriarch Mstyslaw ; Religious Information Service of Ukraine, January 2, 2010; accessed on May 14, 2019 (Ukrainian)
7. ↑ ^{a b} Entry on Skrypnyk, Mstyslav in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine ; accessed on May 14, 2019