The Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Kyiv Patriarchate (UOC-KP; (UPTs-KP)) is an unrecognized Orthodox church in Ukraine. It came into existence in 1992.
After its unilateral declaration of autocephaly in 1992, the patriarchate was not recognised by the other Eastern Orthodox churches, and was considered a "schismatic group" by the Moscow Patriarchate. The Ecumenical Patriarchate decided on 11 October to reintegrate the faithful Christians of Ukraine into the Orthodox Church including the faithful and hierarchs of the UOC-KP and accord to the newly formed church autocephaly. The newly formed church was not recognised as a patriarchy.
St Volodymyr's Cathedral in Kyiv is the UOC-KP's patriarchal cathedral. The church's primate was Patriarch Filaret (Denysenko), who was enthroned in 1995. Filaret was excommunicated by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1997, an action not recognized by the UOC-KP synod.
After the 9–11 October 2018 synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, Filaret's appeal against the excommunication by the Moscow patriarchate was re-examined, he was reinstated as a bishop, and the Ecumenical Patriarchate decided it would grant autocephaly to a unified church in Ukraine. The Kyiv Patriarchate and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church accepted the proposal of the ecumenical patriarchate to dissolve and participate to a unification synod in Kyiv. Thus they merged with other Moscow Patriarchate bishops into an independent (autocephalous) Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. The newly founded autocephalous church has been until now recognized by the ecumenical patriarchate of Constantinople, the autocephalous Church of Greece and the patriarchate of Alexandria, and not yet by other autocephalous churches; the Serbian and Polish have refused to recognise Constantinople's reunifixation Synod and the creation of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. The patriarchate of Moscow had forbidden its clergy from celebrating with clergy of the ecumenical patriarchate.
On 15 December 2018, bishops and delegates from three major branches of Orthodoxy in Ukraine (the UOC-KP, the UAOC and some members of the UOC-MP) unified at a council. During the council, Metropolitan Epiphanius I (a former bishop of the Kyiv Patriarchate) was elected Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Ukraine and became the primate of the new Orthodox Church of Ukraine.
On 20 June 2019, a small number of Pro-Filaret UOC (former UOC-KP) members—including Filaret—left the OCU after a local UOC-KP council.
History
The Kyiv Patriarchate considers itself an independent church, a successor of the Metropolis of Kyiv and all Rus which existed under the Ecumenical Patriarchate until 1686 (when it was incorporated into the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church). In January 1992, after Ukraine became an independent state during the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Metropolitan of Kyiv Filaret convened an assembly at the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra which submitted a request for Ukrainian autocephaly to the Moscow Patriarch. The Moscow Patriarch did not comply.
The church was organised in June 1992. Its nominal primate was the émigré Mstyslav (Skrypnyk), primate of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church. Mstyslav never approved the union of the UAOC and UOC-KP. Although Metropolitan Filaret had been the driving force of the Kyiv Patriarchate, it was not until the sudden death of Patriarch Volodymyr (Romaniuk) in July 1995 that he was elected the Patriarch of Kyiv and All Rus-Ukraine in October of that year. Filaret had been defrocked by the Moscow Patriarchate (in which he had been ordained and served as bishop from February 1962 to spring 1992), and was excommunicated in February 1997.
After the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea, 38 of the church's 46 parishes in Crimea ceased to exist; three churches were seized by Russian authorities. The Kyiv Patriarchate is unrecognised by the Moscow Patriarchate (which considers it schismatic) and other Orthodox churches. In April 2018, the Ecumenical Patriarchate began to consider a request by the Ukrainian Parliament to grant canonical status to the UOC-KP in Ukraine.