Patriarch Mstyslav
Patriarch Mstyslav (Skrypnyk) (10 April 1898 - 11 June 1993). Baptized Stepan Skrypnyk he was born in Poltava (eastern Ukraine) and was the nephew of renowned Ukrainian military man Symon Petliura. During World War I he studied at the Cossack officers' school. He took part in the national liberation struggles from 1917 to 1921 and served as first sergeant for special missions of Chief Ataman S. Petliura. In the early 1920's he was taken into a camp of interned soldiers in Kalisz (Poland). Later, he became an activist for the Ukrainian people and for the cooperative movement in Volyn (northwestern Ukraine). In 1930 he was elected ambassador to the Polish Sejm.He took an active part in secular activities and was also a member of eparchial councils. In 1940 he was elected deputy head of the Chelm (Poland) eparchial council. In April and May 1942 he was ordained to the priesthood, he took his monastic vows and then he was ordained bishop. The same year he became the bishop of Pereiasliv of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC). He was imprisoned during the German occupation and spent half a year in the jails of Chernihiv and Pryluky.
In 1944 he emigrated to Warsaw and later, farther to the West; he was the head of the Ukrainian Orthodox eparchies in Hessen and Wurtemberg (Germany). In 1947 he left for Canada where he was elected the first hierarch of the Ukrainian Greek Orthodox Church as bishop of Winnipeg and all Canada. In 1949 he became the head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) in the USA. At the 1949 Council in New York he succeeded in bringing about unification with the eparchy of Bishop Yoan Teodorovych, who became metropolitan of the UOC in the USA. Bishop Mstyslav became his deputy and the head of the consistory.
In the USA Bishop Mstyslav began extensive church activity with the Ukrainian Orthodox Center, a publishing house, library and seminary being built in South Bound Brook (New Jersey).
In 1965 he became the head of the UAOC in the diaspora. In 1963 and 1971 he
met the Patriarch of Constantinople and acquainted him with the life of the
UAOC. He also brought up the question of its canonical recognition and restoring
the rights of the Ukrainian Church, which it had enjoyed until 1686. In that
year the Kyivan Metropolitanate ceased to be under the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate
of Constantinople and passed on to the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate.
In 1990 he returned to Ukraine where he was elected the first patriarch of Kyiv
and all Ukraine of the UAOC. He was enthroned on 6 November 1990. Patriarch
Mstyslav died in Grisby (Canada) and was buried in Bound Brook.
