Kiev, January 28, 2019
Photo: cerkva.info Philaret Denisenko was honored on Wednesday, January 23 at the Ukraine National Palace of Arts on the occasion of his 90th birthday. The packed crowd of clergy from the Ukrainian schismatic church and state representatives heard a number of speeches in Philaret’s honor, including a video address from President Petro Poroshenko who extolled him as a man who has “already gone down in history as a spiritual and state leader,” reports the site of the schismatic “Kiev Patriarchate.”
Philaret was also congratulated by Sviatoslav (Shevchuk), the head of the Ukrainian Uniate church, and former presidents Leonid Kravchuk and Viktor Yushchenko.
Denisenko himself then addressed the crowd with a speech outlining his monastic and episcopal path, the difficulties faced by the Church in Soviet times, and its challenges in the modern era. His speech lasted about an hour and was repeatedly interrupted by applause, according to the report on the “Kiev Patriarchate” website.
Philaret Denisenko is the former canonical Metropolitan of Kiev. Following the repose of His Holiness Patriarch Pimen of Moscow on May 3, 1990, Philaret was passed over for the patriarchal throne. A number of complaints were later brought against him by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and in response he took an oath before the Cross and Gospel at a session of the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1992 that he would return to Ukraine and petition to be released from his position as the Metropolitan of Kiev. However, he broke this oath and later departed into schism, eventually becoming the leader of the “Kiev Patriarchate.”
Philaret was suspended and later defrocked and later anathematized for a number of offenses, including the scandalous morality of his personal life and his schismatic activities. It is well known that, as a monk, Philaret had a wife and several children. He is also widely believed to have killed his predecessor in the “Kiev Patriarchate” Vladimir Romaniuk. He has maintained that he was sanctioned for daring to ask the Russian Church to grant autocephaly to the Ukrainian Church, though there is no supporting evidence for this assertion.
The type of chains Philaret claims to have worn in his childhood. Photo: Wikipedia He also told the applauding crowd that after a hard day working on the collective farm, he would go home and pray, making 500 prostrations every evening.
In his most shocking statement, the “Honorary Patriarch” of the Ukrainian nationalist church claimed that once, having fallen asleep in a closed church, an angel appeared to him, covered him with his wings, and then took up abode in him.
Commenting on the video on his Facebook page, Fr. Vladimir Gamaris, a priest from Kiev, writes: “Unfortunately, the last claim is true: The father of lies took up his abode in him. I am very sorry for this perishing soul…”
Those who understand Ukrainian can watch a clip from Denisenko’s speech below:
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