Head of the UOC-KP Filaret Denisenko passes away

on March 20, 2026, the head of the UOC-KP Filaret Denisenko died at the age of 98 after an exacerbation of chronic diseases. This is reported by the official website of the OCU.

The life of Filaret (in the world — Mikhail Antonovich Denisenko) began in 1929 in the Donetsk region. He began his ministry in 1950, taking monasticism, and went through all the steps of the church hierarchy: from the rector of the Kyiv Theological Seminary to the Exarch of Ukraine and Locum Tenens of the Moscow Patriarchal Throne. After the restoration of Ukraine’s independence, Filaret led the movement for the creation of the Kyiv Patriarchate, which led to a split with the Russian Orthodox Church, defrocking and a long-standing conflict between the UOC-KP and the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which was transformed in 2018 after the intervention of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, the liquidation of the UOC-KP and the creation of the OCU.

In October 2018, the Holy Synod of the Patriarchate of Constantinople officially recognized the «canonically unjustified decisions of the Russian Orthodox Church to defrock Filaret.» However, after the creation of the OCU, Filaret Denisenko, who wanted to lead the new structure, disagreed with the instructions dictated by Phanar and left the OCU, reviving the «Kyiv Patriarchate,» of which he remained the head until the last day of his life.