Metropolitan Vasyl (Lypkivsky)

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Metropolitan Vasyl (Lypkivsky)
One of the last photos of Metropolitan Vasyl (Lypkivsky)
Born	15 December 1872(1872-12-15) Popudny of Kiev region
Died	27 November 1937 (aged 64)

Metropolitan Vasyl (Lypkivsky) - (7 September 1864 - 27 November 1937), secular name Lypkivskiy Vasyl Kostantynovytch (Ukrainian: Липківський Василь Костянтинович), was born in the village of Popudny of the Kiev region where his father was a priest.

In 1873 he began his education at the Uman Theological Seminary and graduated in 1889 at the Kiev Theological Academy. On October 20, 1891 he became a priest in Lipovets and stayed there for a period of 11 years. In 1903 he was transferred to Kyiv and was appointed as director of the school for preparation of teachers for the theological schools in the Kyiv region. He was also appointed as a rector for a parish in Solomenka, Kyiv.

During this time the Orthodox Church in Ukraine remained part of the Russian Orthodox Church until Ukraine affirmed its independence in the chaotic situation following World War I and the Russian revolution. The government of this new republic passed a law allowing for the founding of a Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church in 1919. For the time being, an unstructured association in favor of ending ties with the Russian church was gaining ground among the Ukrainian Orthodox faithful.

All this led to the assertion of Ukrainian autocephaly at a church council in 1921. Since no Orthodox bishop would take part in this action, the council decided to ordain its leader, Archpriest Vasyl Lypkivsky, as Metropolitan of Kiev and All Ukraine for the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church through the laying-on-of-hands by the priests and laypeople present. Because of the extremely unorthodox method it used to obtain a hierarchy, and its disrespect for some established canonical principles, this church was never acknowledged by any other Orthodox church. However, by early 1924 the new church had 30 bishops and approximately 1,500 priests and deacons serving in nearly 1,100 parishes in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, with possibly as many as six million faithful.

When Ukraine was captivated into the Soviet Union, the new authorities at first viewed the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in a positive way, but by the late 1920s, they saw it as a dangerous expression of Ukrainian nationalism. Under government force, it declared itself dissolved and incorporated into the Moscow Patriarchate in 1930.

In 1937 Metropolitan Vasyl (Lypkivsky) was sentenced to death by the decree of the Troika UNKVD, and was executed on November 27, 1937. In 1989, he was rehabilitated.