METROPOLITAN DIONYSIUS OF WARSAW AND ALL POLAND AND HIS ARCHPASTORAL ACTIVITIES FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE UKRAINIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH

Abstract

On 13 November 2024, the centenary of the granting of the Tomos of Autocephaly by the Patriarchate of Constantinople to the Orthodox Church in Poland, led by Metropolitan Dionysius of Warsaw and Volyn, will be marked. Upon the tragic death of Yurii Yaroshevskyi (8 February 1923), the Council of Bishops elected on the 27th of February 1923, and Ecumenical Patriarch Meletius IV blessed ( 13 March 1923) Bishop Dionysii, a prominent Orthodox hierarch and scholarly theologian, who was committed to solving the church problems of Ukrainians, to the see of Primate. On 13 November 1924, Ecumenical Patriarch Gregory VII, together with the Holy Synod, granted the Tomos of Autocephaly to the Orthodox Church in Poland, which was solemnly proclaimed on 17 September 1925 in Warsaw with the participation of representatives of the Constantinople and Romanian Churches and government officials. The article analyses the activities of Bishop Dionysius during the national liberation struggle of 1917-1921, briefly describes his archpastoral activities as Primate of the Orthodox Church in Poland and the reasons for his double non-canonical removal from the see, as clearly stated by the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 1940 and 1950, as well as his holy blessing for the ordination of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox hierarchy in 1940-1943. Considering the importance of the personality of Metropolitan Dionysius of Valedine for the history of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the first half of the twentieth century, the authors tried to cover the complicated issues of the archpastoral activity of the hierarch, in particular his assistance in the creation of the canonical episcopate of the UOC, which had important consequences for the struggle for spiritual independence from the Russian Orthodox Church and the receipt of the Tomos of Autocephaly of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine from Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew on 6 January 2019. The article seeks to explore, on the basis of archival and documentary records, an important issue of interchurch relations in the twentieth century. The materials from the archives of the Warsaw Metropolitanate of the Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church were not used to expand the main topic, since, firstly, the research deals only with the Ukrainian lands under the care of Metropolitan Dionysius, and secondly, due to certain difficulties in crossing the border by men during the Russian-Ukrainian war.