Stefan Ustvolsky was a Russian Orthodox priest excommunicated from the Most Holy Synod in Saint Petersburg and pretend bishop in early Ukrainian Canadian history. He called himself Bishop Seraphim, Metropolitan of the Orthodox Russian Church for the whole of America and started the All-Russian Patriarchal Orthodox Church in 1903 in Winnipeg. His claim of consecration was backed by forged documentation and the church eventually fell apart around 1908.
Europe
Seraphim was born Stefan Ustvolsky in 1858. Ustvolsky’s name is probably linked with the birthplace of his relatives on his father’s side - the village of Ust’-Volma, Russia. Ustvolsky graduated from the Olonets Theological Seminary, and in 1881 he completed his studies at the Saint Petersburg Theological Academy with a degree in theology and "the right to obtain a master's degree from a new oral test ".
In June 1881, he was appointed a priest in the Moscow court at Verkhospassky Cathedral. In January 1882, he transferred as a priest to the church of the 8th Grenadier Moscow Regiment quartered in Tver. In April 1882, he was accused by the commanding Colonel of the regiment, Ivan Karlović von Burzi (Иван Карлович фон Бурзи), of misconduct which was fully confirmed in the course of the investigation conducted. Ustvolsky requested from the Holy Synod (Прещение), a rebuke or resignation with dignity . The request was granted, and as an exception, by Imperial decree was given to him the right and the rank of a collegiate secretary. After some time, for unknown reasons (obscured by him), this was lost. In May 1901, he entered into the brotherhood of the Novgorod Khutyn Monastery.
Then, he traveled to Mount Athos, to its Russian Monastery. What the Ukrainians in Canada learned about Ustvolsky’s life before his arrival in Canada, what Ustvolsky told of himself, Ivan Bodrug recorded in his memoir: “On Athos, living out his life and fast approaching the grave, was the aged Patriarch Anphim (Анфим). That Patriarch, like the other Patriarchs, disliked Russian Orthodoxy for the reason that in Russia the Tsars had abolished the Patriarchate and substituted themselves as heads of the Orthodox Church. In the monastery at Athos, there lived a Master of Theology, Father Stephen Ustvolsky, who had previously been a Court priest in St. Petersburg (Bodrug may have made a mistake here). When his wife deserted him to live with a Polish Colonel, Ustvolsky became a monk on Athos. The retired Anphim ordained this same Ustvolsky and sent him to America as Bishop in defiance of the Russian Synod.”
The Holy Synod at this time was practically a Russian government agency, and after Anthimus VII had retired from his position, he may have for personal reasons, in protest, because of his dissatisfaction with the circumstances of the Russian Orthodox Church, ordained Ustvolsky as a bishop.
New York
To discard his old identity and to look ahead, according to the religious practice of taking on a new name, Ustvolsky chose Seraphim. Now calling himself Bishop Seraphim, he left for the new world. He arrived in New York in 1902, where he stayed with Ukrainian priests briefly. Again, in Bodrug’s words: “Thus in 1902, Bishop Seraphim arrived unexpectedly from Athos to America. Our dissenters from Catholicism met Seraphim in New York, but found that Seraphim was a Russian patriot who recognized neither Ukraine nor Ukrainians. Disillusioned, they refused to accept him as their Archbishop and later all returned to their Irish Bishops, ‘repenting’ of their errors.”