Formal portrait of Patriarch Mstyslav in patriarchal garb taken at his residence in South Bound Brook
Metropolitan and Patriarch Mstyslav (born Stepan Skrypnyk) was a major force in the religious and community life not only of Ukrainian Orthodox faithful, but of Ukrainians in general in New Jersey and far beyond. As a bishop for over 5 decades in the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC), the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada, and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA, he eventually became the Metroplitan (prime hierarch) of the latter and was even elected as Patriarch of Kyiv and All Ukraine. The establishment and growth of the Ukrainian Orthodox Metropolia Center in Somerset/S. Bound Brook was the result of his singular vision and leadership.
Stepan Skrypnyk was born on April 10, 1898 in the city of Poltava in the Russian Empire (now Ukraine). His father Ivan was as descendent of the Poltava Cossacks, and his mother Mariamna was the sister of Symon Petliura, who would later be commander of the armies of the Ukrainian People’s Republic and Chairman of the Directorate (the last of the three governments that rose and fell during the brief period of Ukrainian independence in the late 1910s). His family also had a history of religious service, including a grandmother and grandfather who became monks and even founded monasteries.
Stepan Skrypnyk as an officer in the Army of the Ukrainian People’s Republic
The young Stepan attended the Poltava classical gymnasium, and then entered the Russian Imperial Officers School in Orenburg, east of the Ural Mountains. During the Ukrainian War of Independence of 1917-1921 he was a diplomatic courier for the Ukrainian People’s Republic and served as first sergeant for special misions for Petliura. After the war he was interned at an internment camp in Kalisz, Poland, and then settled in Volhynia and Galicia and became an activist for the Ukrainian movement in inter-War Poland. He completed his studies at the Warsaw School of Political Sciences, was elected in 1930 to the Polish Sejm (parliament), and served as vice-mayor of the city of Rivne. Skrypnyk gained a reputation as a staunch defender of Ukrainian minority rights in Poland.
Having become a widower, in April 1942 he was ordained to the deaconate and priesthood. A month later, he was tonsured a monk and took the monastic name Mstyslav. On May 12, he was elected to the office of bishop and on May 14, 1942 was consecrated bishop of Pereiaslav for the UAOC in St. Andrew Cathedral, Kyiv.
Beginning in June 1942, Bishop Mstyslav began an energetic program of pastoral visitations throughout Ukraine, which drew the unfavorable attention of the Nazi occupational authorities. They ordered Mstyslav to leave Kyiv and curtail his activities in central Ukraine, but he ignored the order and “went underground”. On October 14, 1942 he was arrested in Rivne, and spent over two months in the Gestapo prison in Chernihiv. In early 1943 he was released to “internal exile” in the city of Pryluky. Thanks to the efforts of the UAOC Metropolitan Polikarp (Sikorsky), Mstyslav survived his imprisonment and in the spring of 1943 was allowed back to Kyiv, though he was forbidden from performing church services or speaking publicly.
With the approach of the Red Army in 1943, Mstyslav and his brother bishops fled first to Warsaw, and then to western and southern Germany, where they lead the churches in the numerous displaced persons camps in western Europe. In 1947, the Synod of Bishops of the UAOC elevated Bishop Mstyslav to Archbishop, and in the fall of the same year he departed Europe to head the Ukrainian Greek Orthodox Church of Canada. Unfortunately, as a result of disputes regarding the balance of power between the bishop and church administrators and other conflicts, Archbishop Mstyslav tendered his resignation as head of the Ukrainian Greek Orthodox Church of Canada in early 1949 and moved to the United States.
In 1948, the Sobor of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in America of the Ecumenical Patriarchate under Bishop Bohdan (Shpylka) voted to have Archbishop Mstyslav join their jurisdiction. Upon the initiative of Archbishop Mstyslav, many parishes of the UOC in America and its rival jurisdiction, the American Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the US, joined to form the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA in 1950. In 1971, Mstyslav was elevated to Metropolitan.
Patriarch Mstyslav gives Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk a tour of the Memorial Church Museum (the predecessor of the UHEC Patriarch Mstyslav Museum)
Thanks to the foresightedness and organizational abilities of Metropolitan Mstyslav, the UOC of the USA was able to acquire the property in South Bound Brook/Somerset, NJ, where St. Andrew Cemetery was established and St. Andrew Memorial Church was constructed. In 1991, at the age of 93, he was elected in absentia as the first Patriarch of Kyiv and all Rus-Ukraine. He was enthroned as Patriarch Mstyslav I, on November 6, 1991 in St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv. After several additional trips to Ukraine, he died at his daughter’s home in Canada on June 11, 1993 at the age of 95. His sarcophagus lies in the Holy Resurrection Mausoleum beneath St. Andrew Memorial Church in Somerset/S. Bound Brook.