On March 20, on his 98th year of life, the Honorary Patriarch of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, Filaret, passed away. Starting in the evening, the farewell ceremony for the newly reposed began in the cathedral church of the Holy Michael Golden-Domed Monastery.
Patriarch Filaret (Denysenko; 1929–2026) was an outstanding church figure who dedicated his life to the struggle for the independence of Ukrainian Orthodoxy. From 1966, he served as Metropolitan of Kyiv within the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), and from 1992 he led the movement for autocephaly, becoming in 1995 the Patriarch of Kyiv and All Rus-Ukraine in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC-KP). Largely thanks to his many years of activity, the Ukrainian Church received the Tomos of autocephaly in 2018, and Filaret was granted the title of Honorary Patriarch of the OCU. In 2004, under the editorship of Patriarch Filaret, the Bible was published in Ukrainian translation, which became the first complete Orthodox translation of Holy Scripture into modern literary Ukrainian. In 2019, he was awarded the title of Hero of Ukraine.
