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Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church

70 bytes added, 23:40, September 14, 2012
UAOC in the Diaspora
Due to the cultural differences that had developed as a result of the Polish occupation and the Union of Brest the reunion of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine with the Church of Rus' was opposed by some Ukrainian Orthodox, who began advocating the establishment of an independent Church of Ukraine. Although suppressed by the Russian Empire, following its collapse in the early 20th century supporters of an independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church held an All-Ukrainian Council (''sobor'') in Kiev that on 5 May 1920 declared the establishment of an independent Local Orthodox Church in Ukraine.
The UAOC sought for hierarchical support, but none of the hierarchs serving in Ukraine would join the Church and consequently in 1921 a group of clergy and laymen together "consecrated" Archpriest [[Vasyl Lypkivskyj]] as a bishop, enthroning him as Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Ukraine. He consequently "consecrated" other bishops for Ukraine and dioceses of the UAOC formed in Canada and the United States by Ukrainian nationalists and converts from Ukrainian Catholicism. (These eparchies later became the [[Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada]] and the [[Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the USA|Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the United StatesUSA]].)
The UAOC in Ukraine was dissolved following the Bolshevik occupation and annexation of eastern and central Ukraine in the 1920s. In 1924, however, the Ecumenical Patriarchate unilaterally rescinded the transfer of the Orthodox Church in what today is western Ukraine, Belarus, and Poland to the Church of Rus' and established it as the independent [[Church of Poland]]. Although operating on the territory of interwar Poland and officially called the Polish Orthodox Church, this new Local Orthodox Church's flock was primarily Ukrainian and Belorussian in composition.
==Restoration of the UAOC==
During World War II the German government strongly encouraged Ukrainian and Belorussian nationalism as a counterweight to Polish and Soviet resistance and influence in Eastern Europe. It was this that allowed dissident hierarchs of the Polish Orthodox Church in what had been southeastern Poland and the western USSR to declare the restoration of the UAOC in 1942. Bishop [[Polycarp (SikorskiSikorsky) of Volodymyr-VolynskyiLutsk]], formerly of the Church of Poland, became the first legitimately consecrated hierarch to serve as primate of the UAOC (its pre-WWII hierarchical consecrations had all been invalid under canon law).
==UAOC in the Diaspora==
The restoration of the UAOC in Ukraine proved to be brief as the region was occupied by the Red Army in the 1940s and annexed to the Soviet Union. Those hierarchs and clergy of the UAOC who remained in Soviet Ukraine were forced to submit to the [[Moscow Patriarchate]] or else sent into internal exile or executed. Several of the Church's hierarchs fled the advance of the Red Army and ended up in the Ukrainian Diaspora in the West, among them Metropolitan Polycarp.
In the following years the UAOC existed only in the Diaspora, with parishes scattered across the globe in Australia, North and South America, and Western Europe. It, like other jurisdictions present in the West following the Bolshevik Revolution, drifted in and out of communion with world Orthodoxy. Following the repose of Metropolitan Polycarp in France in 1953, Archbishop [[Mstyslav (Skrypnyk) of Kiev|Mstyslav (Skrypnyk)]] of Parma became primate of the UAOC in 1969.
==UAOC Returns to Ukraine==
[[fr:Église orthodoxe autocéphale ukrainienne]]
[[ro:Biserica Ortodoxă Autocefală Ucraineană]]
 
 
[[Category:Jurisdictions]]
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