You're reading: Leader of Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Volodymyr, dies aged 78

 Leader of Ukrainian Orthodox Church subordinate to the Moscow Patriarchate, Metropolitan Volodymyr (Sabodan) died on July 5 aged 78, the church said in a statement.

Metropolitan
Volodymyr has been in grave health for months, and died in a Kyiv
hospital, where he was treated for an internal bleeding, Ukrainian
media reported. He has been largely absent from the public eye
lately, struggling with cancer and Parkinson disease. He had also
undergone a heart and a hip surgery, according to UNIAN news agency.

The
patriarch led the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate)
since 1992. An ethnic Ukrainian, he was believed to be a unifying,
and pro-Ukrainian figure in the church controlled by Moscow, which
allowed its Kyiv branch a certain degree of independence.

There
are several potential candidates among the church’s bishops to
replace Metropolitan Volodymyr. Most often mentioned as a successor
is Metropolitan Antoniy (Pakanych), but the candidacies of
metropolitans Onufriy of Bukovyna, and Ilarion from Donetsk are also
under discussion.

Ukraine’s 1+1 television channel said in a June 22 report that the previous government attempted to kill Metropolitan Volodymyr. 

Fr. Oleksandr Drabynko, his aide, said that former General Prosecutor Viktor Pshonka and former Interior Minister Oleksandr Zakharchenko. Both are now hiding in Russia and are under investigation in Ukraine. 

“The metropolitan complained that they tormented him” during their frequent visit to the hospital, Fr. Drabynko said.

Representatives of the Kyiv Patrirchate, a sister church that is not subordinate to Moscow, said that because a metropolitan is appointed to life, there was no way to replace freedom-loving, pro-Ukrainian Metropolitan Volodymyr until he died, by a more Kremlin-friendly leader.

“To replace him, it was needed that he was gone to the next world, this is why they treated him the way they did,” Patriarch Filaret, leader of Orthodox Church, Kyiv Patriarchate, told 1+1 TV. 

His assistant Fr. Drabynko was kept under guard and away from the metropolitan for most of last year, while state-appointed doctors kept his lethal diagnosis secret from him, his assistant maintains.

Patriarch Volodymyr himself complained about a threat to his life in his last letter to Interior Minister Zakharchenko in December 2013.

“I totally do not want to believe that people who have been taking decisions to change this situation are interested in keeping me without the medical assistance that I require,” he wrote.