Overview
- Kyodo News reported that Filaret died on March 20 from complications of a chronic illness at age 97.
- He served as the honorary primate of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, described as the country’s largest independent Orthodox body.
- He played a central role in the campaign to end the Ukrainian church’s subordination to the Russian Orthodox Church.
- After Ukraine’s independence, he founded the Kyiv Patriarchate in 1992 and became its patriarch in 1995, later guiding unification efforts in 2018.
- Born in 1929 in Donetsk region, he studied in Odesa and at Moscow’s theological academy, held senior posts within the Russian Orthodox Church, and was mentioned as a patriarchal candidate in 1990.