Denomination

Ukrainian Orthodox Church

Christianity

Origin 988

Ukrainian Orthodoxy shares its origin with the Russian church in the 988 baptism of Kievan Rus at Kyiv. Its modern jurisdiction is genuinely contested: the Orthodox Church of Ukraine received a Tomos of Autocephaly from the Ecumenical Patriarchate in January 2019, recognized by some Orthodox churches and not by others, while the Ukrainian Orthodox Church previously under the Moscow Patriarchate declared expanded independence in 2022 on terms whose canonical status remains disputed.

History & Origin

Traces its Christian origin to the 988 baptism of Kyivan Rus under Grand Prince Vladimir, and gained recognition as an autocephalous church distinct from the Moscow Patriarchate through the Ecumenical Patriarchate's 2019 Tomos.

Facts

Attributions

Church Family

Eastern Orthodox 1

Origins

Origin Period

988 2

Place of Origin

Kyiv, capital of Kievan Rus 2

Founder

No single founder. Traces its Christian origin to the 988 baptism of Kyivan Rus under Grand Prince Vladimir. 2

History

Date of Separationthe subject's own account

2018 to 2019 3

Trajectory

Membership Over Time

A 2022 Razumkov Centre opinion survey, reported by the Religious Information Service of Ukraine, found that 5.5 percent of Ukrainians identified themselves as faithful of the church then under the Moscow Patriarchate, against 35.2 percent identifying with the rival Orthodox Church of Ukraine. 7

Membership Over Timethe subject's own account

In a 2008 analysis, the geopolitical research firm Stratfor estimated that more than fifty percent of the Ukrainian population belonged to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, then under the Moscow Patriarchate. 8

Membership Figure As Ofthe subject's own account

2008-01-01 8

Membership Figure As Of

2022-01-01 7

Basis of the Membership Figure

Independent Survey 7

Basis of the Membership Figurethe subject's own account

Scholarly or Demographic Estimate 8

Practice

Liturgical Language

Church Slavonic 5

Law and State

Ban or Official Watchlist

A 2024 Ukrainian law bans the activity of religious organisations found to be affiliated with or directed from the Russian Federation, a measure aimed principally at the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, historically linked to the Moscow Patriarchate. Ukraine's government frames the law as a wartime security measure; it has been described internationally, including by some religious freedom monitors, as raising concerns about religious persecution of the church. 6

Disputed

Separation or Divergence

Two jurisdictions claim Ukrainian Orthodox loyalty today 3

the subject's own accountThe Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) formed from a December 2018 unification council and received a Tomos of Autocephaly from the Ecumenical Patriarchate in January 2019; it is recognized as canonical by the churches of Constantinople, Greece, Alexandria and Cyprus. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church previously under the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP) declared expanded independence from Moscow in May 2022, after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but whether this constitutes genuine autocephaly is itself disputed, since only a recognized autocephalous church or the Ecumenical Patriarchate can properly confer that status. The Moscow Patriarchate does not recognize the OCU and broke communion with Constantinople over the 2019 Tomos. This entry states both positions without adjudicating between them.

Belief

Defining Doctrinal Position

Trinitarian: one God in three persons 1

Its own record shares its origin with the Russian church's 988 baptism, matching Eastern Orthodoxy, already carried as trinitarian.

Defining Doctrinal Position

Chalcedonian: two natures in the one person of Christ (Chalcedon, 451) 1

Its own record shares its origin with the Russian church's 988 baptism, matching Eastern Orthodoxy, already carried as chalcedonian.

Defining Doctrinal Position

Rejects the Filioque: the Spirit proceeds from the Father 1

Its own record shares its origin with the Russian church's 988 baptism, matching Eastern Orthodoxy, already carried as filioque-rejecting.

Organisation

Governance

Self-governing churches under patriarchs, deciding in synod 3

the subject's own accountEach of the two present-day jurisdictions is governed by its own synod under its own primate

Ordination

Restricted to men 4

Ordination

Married clergy permitted 4

An Eastern Orthodox national church sharing the 988 Kyiv baptism, per its own record.

Status

Status Today

Living tradition, practised today 5

A living tradition whose institutional jurisdiction remains actively contested

In Other Languages (12 names)

Learn More

Shared Roots, Divergent Paths

Ukrainian Orthodox Christianity traces to the same 988 baptism of Kievan Rus that the Russian church claims as its own founding moment, since Kyiv, not Moscow, was the political and religious center of the Rus lands converted under Prince Vladimir. For centuries the Metropolitanate of Kyiv held a senior, largely autonomous place under the Ecumenical Patriarchate even as political power in the Rus lands shifted northward after the Mongol conquest.

In 1686 the Ecumenical Patriarchate transferred the Kyiv Metropolitanate to the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patriarchate, an act whose canonical propriety Constantinople itself later disputed, ruling in 2018 that the original transfer had been intended as temporary and improperly exercised. For the following three centuries most Ukrainian Orthodox life was administered from Moscow, though rival Ukrainian jurisdictions repeatedly asserted independence, including a short-lived Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church proclaimed in 1921 and suppressed under Soviet rule, and further autocephalous and independent bodies that formed after Ukrainian independence in 1991 but received no wide international recognition for decades.

By the early twenty-first century, Ukrainian Orthodoxy existed as several competing jurisdictions claiming the same territory and often the same parishes, a fragmentation the events described in the following article attempted, only partially, to resolve.

The 2018-2019 Tomos and Its Aftermath

In December 2018 a unification council in Kyiv merged Ukraine's previously unrecognized Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church and Kyivan Patriarchate bodies into a single new Orthodox Church of Ukraine, and on 6 January 2019 Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I granted this new church a Tomos of Autocephaly, formal recognition as an independent, self-governing church. The Ecumenical Patriarchate's own churches, along with the churches of Greece, Alexandria and Cyprus, subsequently recognized the Orthodox Church of Ukraine as canonical; the Moscow Patriarchate did not, and broke communion with Constantinople itself over the decision, a rupture other Orthodox churches have responded to differently and that remains unresolved across the Orthodox world.

The competing body, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church that had remained under Moscow's jurisdiction, declared in May 2022, following Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine that February, that it was severing practical ties to the Moscow Patriarchate and adopting full independence. Whether this declaration constitutes genuine autocephaly, a status only a recognized autocephalous church or the Ecumenical Patriarchate can properly confer, is itself disputed: the church's own statutes and canonical relationships remain contested both within Ukraine and among outside observers, and Ukrainian civil authorities have separately moved to restrict the Moscow-linked church's legal operation. This entry describes both positions rather than adjudicating between them; the underlying dispute over recognition and canonical status remains genuinely unsettled.

A New Calendar Widens the Break With Moscow

On 27 July 2023 a Local Council of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, the body Constantinople had granted its own tomos of autocephaly in January 2019, voted to adopt the Revised Julian calendar, effective from the start of the new church year on 1 September that same year. The change moved every fixed feast thirteen days earlier: Christmas, kept for a century on the unrevised Julian date of January 7, was observed on December 25 for the first time that December, alongside the rest of the calendar's fixed observances. Parishes and monasteries that preferred to keep the old dates were told they could continue to do so, so the reform reached the church gradually rather than by decree alone.

The timing was not separate from the war. The decision followed Russia's full scale invasion in February 2022 by a little over a year, and it widened a break with Moscow that the 2019 tomos had already opened. The Julian calendar itself had come to be read in Ukraine as a marker of Russian church culture specifically, not simply of Orthodox tradition in general, and moving off it read as a further, deliberate step away from Moscow rather than as a change made for its own sake.

Where the six other Orthodox churches this atlas covers arrived at their calendar decisions across the 1920s, the Ukrainian church's decision is the newest, and its reasoning is explicitly the war.

Ukrainian Orthodox Church

13 entries

Status Within the Tradition

Origin Period Start Year

Affirmation Of

Category of Belief

Subject

Obligation

Connections

Associated With

Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople

The Patriarchate granted autocephaly to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine in 2019.

Source Tomos of Autocephaly of the Orthodox Church of UkraineEcumenical Patriarchate of Constantinoplethe holders' own account

Kyiv

Kyiv is the seat of contested Orthodox jurisdictions in Ukraine.

New Blog: Office of Stewardship

This source names Ukrainian Orthodox Church directly: "The Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA's own announcement of a general stewardship resource, promoting giving in spiritual terms with no stated percentage, due or member consequence named anywhere..."

Source New Blog: Office of Stewardship

Ukraine Adopts 'Historic' Law to Ban Moscow-Linked Orthodox Church (Al Jazeera)

This source names Ukrainian Orthodox Church directly: "allowing the government to ban the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate over its historical ties to the Russian Orthodox Church, and President Zelensky's signature of the bill into..."

Source Ukraine Adopts 'Historic' Law to Ban Moscow-Linked Orthodox Church (Al Jazeera)

Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) (Wikipedia)

This source names Ukrainian Orthodox Church directly: "The English Wikipedia article on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate), read 2026-08-16, quoting a 2008 Stratfor analysis estimating that more than fifty percent of the Ukrainian..."

Source Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

Belongs To Church Family

Eastern Orthodox Churches

Belongs to Tradition

Christianity

Branch Of

Christianity

Eastern Orthodoxy

Both present-day Ukrainian Orthodox jurisdictions stand within the wider Eastern Orthodox communion; only their mutual and Moscow relations are contested.

Source The Orthodox ChurchTimothy Ware (Kallistos Ware)

Governed By Polity

Patriarchal-Synodal Polity

Holds Element

Kyiv Pechersk Lavra

The monastery founded in the eleventh century is the oldest and most important in the Ukrainian church, and its tenancy has been the subject of legal proceedings since 2023.

Primary Chronicle

The chronicle was compiled at Kyiv and the Ukrainian church reads it as the record of its own foundation, which is why the same text stands at the head of two national histories.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Held Differently

Znamenny Chant

The Kyivan redaction grew its own melodies and was written in square notation rather than in hooks, and it is what Ukrainian parishes sing rather than the Muscovite form.

Objects and Practices of This Tradition

1 Esdras

Included in the wider Eastern Orthodox Old Testament canon beyond the Trent-era Roman Catholic deuterocanon, affirmed at the Synod of Jerusalem, 1672.

Source The Confession of Dositheus (Synod of Jerusalem, 1672)Synod of Jerusalemthe holders' own account

3 Maccabees

Included in the wider Eastern Orthodox Old Testament canon beyond the Trent-era Roman Catholic deuterocanon, affirmed at the Synod of Jerusalem, 1672.

Source The Confession of Dositheus (Synod of Jerusalem, 1672)Synod of Jerusalemthe holders' own account

A male-only ordained ministry

A Married Parish Priesthood With Celibate Bishops

Additions to Daniel

Source The Confession of Dositheus (Synod of Jerusalem, 1672)Synod of Jerusalemthe holders' own account

Additions to Esther

Source The Confession of Dositheus (Synod of Jerusalem, 1672)Synod of Jerusalemthe holders' own account

Almsgiving / Charity

Kept in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Almsgiving is bound closely to the fasting seasons, what is not spent on food being given away.

Ancestral Sin as Inherited Mortality Rather Than Inherited Guilt

Anointing of the Sick

Kept in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Holy Unction is one of the seven mysteries and is administered to the living faithful in general, most publicly on Holy Wednesday, and not to the dying alone.

Archbishop

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Archimandrite

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Ascension Day

Autocephaly and Conciliar Governance Without a Universal Primate

Baptism

Kept in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Baptism is by threefold immersion, and is followed immediately by chrismation and communion in the same service.

Baptismal life

Kept in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Baptism, chrismation and first communion are given together in one rite, so the baptismal life begins in infancy and is not deferred to an age of discretion.

Benedictus (Canticle of Zechariah)

Kept in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

Bishop

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Book of Baruch

Source The Confession of Dositheus (Synod of Jerusalem, 1672)Synod of Jerusalemthe holders' own account

Book of Judith

Source The Confession of Dositheus (Synod of Jerusalem, 1672)Synod of Jerusalemthe holders' own account

Book of Tobit

Source The Confession of Dositheus (Synod of Jerusalem, 1672)Synod of Jerusalemthe holders' own account

Books of the Maccabees

Source The Confession of Dositheus (Synod of Jerusalem, 1672)Synod of Jerusalemthe holders' own account

Bright Week

Byzantine Rite

Kept in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

Candlemas

Celibacy / Monasticism

Kept in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Orthodoxy ordains married men to the priesthood but requires that bishops be monks, so celibacy shapes the episcopate rather than the parish; Mount Athos remains the tradition's monastic centre.

Chalcedonian Christology (Two Natures in One Person)

Source The Definition of Faith of the Council of ChalcedonCouncil of Chalcedonthe holders' own account

Christmas

The Nativity of Christ. The two Ukrainian Orthodox jurisdictions have moved apart on the calendar, so no single date is asserted here.

Churching of Women

Kept in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The churching of a mother and the presentation of a child on the fortieth day is kept as a living rite here, not as a survival.

Clean Monday

Closed communion

Compline

Kept in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

Confession

Kept in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The Orthodox confess standing beside the priest before an icon rather than through a grille, the priest understood as a witness rather than a judge, and confession is ordinarily expected before receiving communion.

Confirmation

Kept in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Chrismation is given with baptism, in infancy, by a presbyter using chrism consecrated by a bishop. The rite completes initiation here rather than following it years later.

Deacon

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Divine Liturgy of St Basil

Kept in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom

Kept in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

Dormition of the Theotokos

Episcopal church governance

Exaltation of the Holy Cross

Exorcism

Kept in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Prayers of exorcism are read over every candidate as a fixed part of the baptismal service, before the renunciation and the anointing.

Fasting

Kept in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Orthodox fasting means abstinence rather than hunger: no meat, dairy, eggs, fish with backbones, wine or oil on the strictest days, kept through Great Lent and three further fasting seasons and on most Wednesdays and Fridays, which is roughly half the year.

Fasting in Lent

Foot washing

Kept in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The washing of feet is performed on Holy Thursday by a bishop, the Niptir, in the cathedral and in the great monasteries.

Forgiveness Sunday

Funeral Rites

Kept in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The funeral service, the Panikhida and the memorial services on the third, ninth and fortieth days form one continuous set of offices for the dead.

Gloria Patri

Kept in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

Good Friday

Great Lent

Hesychasm (the Jesus Prayer)

Kept in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The Jesus Prayer belongs to Orthodoxy, defended by Gregory Palamas against the charge that its practitioners claimed to see God's essence; monks and increasingly laypeople repeat it alone on a knotted woollen cord, and teachers warn against the breathing technique without direction.

Hieromonk

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Showing 1 to 50 of 117 in Objects and Practices of This Tradition, page 1 of 3.

Originates in Language

Old Church Slavonic

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church uses Church Slavonic liturgically alongside growing Ukrainian-language practice.

Source Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic ChurchIsabel Florence Hapgood (compiler and translator)

Sacred to This Deity

Pochayiv

Source The Orthodox ChurchTimothy Ware (Kallistos Ware)

Uses Liturgical Language

Church Slavonic

Sources

1. The Orthodox Church

Timothy Ware (Kallistos Ware), Penguin Books, 1993View the Source

2. The Russian Primary Chronicle (Povest vremennykh let), Laurentian Text

Anonymous (compiled at Kiev); Samuel Hazzard Cross and Olgerd P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor (trans.), Mediaeval Academy of America, 1953View the Source

3. Tomos of Autocephaly of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine

Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, 2019the holders' own account

4. Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic Church

Isabel Florence Hapgood (compiler and translator), Houghton Mifflin, 1906View the Source

5. Law of Ukraine on the Protection of the Constitutional Order in the Field of Activities of Religious Organizations

Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, 2024

6. Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)

Encyclopaedia Britannica editors, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 2024View the Source

7. Razumkov Center: 35.2% of Ukrainians Consider Themselves Faithful of the OCU, 5.5% of the Moscow Patriarchate (RISU, 2022)

Razumkov Centre (survey), reported by RISU, Religious Information Service of Ukraine (RISU), 2022View the Source

8. Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) (Wikipedia)

Wikipedia contributors, Wikipedia, 2026View the Source

The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition

F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2005View the Source

Open Questions (1 open question)

Does the Ukrainian Orthodox Church Hold a Formal Personal Member Giving Obligation?

The Ukrainian Orthodox Church's jurisdiction is genuinely contested (the Orthodox Church of Ukraine under the 2019 Tomos of Autocephaly against the church previously under the Moscow Patriarchate), and no single source found across two bands establishes a giving norm for either reading of it. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA's own institutional announcement of a general stewardship resource promotes giving only in general spiritual terms, "the deep spiritual roots of Orthodox stewardship", with no stated percentage, due or consequence for a member who does not give, distinct from the codified due-with-consequences shape already recorded on this axis for Serbian and Armenian parish practice.

What would resolve this A primary source from a specific Ukrainian Orthodox jurisdiction (the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA, or the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada) stating a specific dues, pledge or tithe structure and what follows, if anything, when a member does not meet it; or a scholarly study of Ukrainian Orthodox parish finance addressing member giving specifically.

Slavic Orthodox studies, primary source review of Ukrainian Orthodox jurisdictional financeNew Blog: Office of Stewardship

Comments (0)

No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.

Reader Challenges (0)

No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.

View At A Past Year

Choose a year to see this entry's facts and connections as the atlas records them at that moment: what it held then, what it held instead, and what it had not yet adopted. Choose Present for the current record.

Year

Switch Atlas

The Inner World

The Civil World

The Natural World

Ukrainian Orthodox Church

History & Origin

A male-only ordained ministry

A Married Parish Priesthood With Celibate Bishops

Ancestral Sin as Inherited Mortality Rather Than Inherited Guilt

Autocephaly and Conciliar Governance Without a Universal Primate

Chalcedonian Christology (Two Natures in One Person)

Closed communion

Episcopal church governance

Infant baptism (paedobaptism)

Rejection of the filioque

The Holy Trinity

The resurrection of Christ

The Seven Ecumenical Councils as the Complete Dogmatic Deposit

Theosis (deification)

Associated With

Belongs To Church Family

Belongs to Tradition

Branch Of

Governed By Polity

Holds Element

Held Differently

Objects and Practices of This Tradition

Originates in Language

Sacred to This Deity

Uses Liturgical Language

View At A Past Year