July 14 saw the seventh anniversary of the sudden death of Patriarch Volodymyr (Romaniuk) of Kyiv and All Rus-Ukraine. The Patriarch’s funeral, now a page in history, was one of the most dramatic events in the public life of our recently independent state, which vividly showed that we still had far to go to a truly civil society. In particular, the Patriarch’s grave next to St. Sophia’s Cathedral of Kyiv was a bitter reminder that the Soviet traditions of pouring scorn on a person, and that public opinion had remained almost intact. Further proof of this is the sad fact that the destiny of a priest turned political prisoner (he spent a total 25 years in prison and in exile), his accession to the patriarch’s see, dramatic death, and tragic burial have very little been reflected in Ukrainian art, have not been the plot of a movie or a television production, and have almost been forgotten by the mass media.
Among the few functions dedicated to the memory of the first Kyiv Patriarch, worthy of note is a requiem service at his grave, conducted by the Kyiv Patriarchate clergy and attended by many participants in the events of seven years ago, as well as a memorial soiree at the Taras Shevchenko State Museum strangely connected with the Patriarch’s day of death: he visited the museum on the last day of his life, examining the exhibits and welcoming the employees. He died three hours after the visit.
The people who gathered to pay tribute to the Patriarch’s memory spoke about the importance of his brief tenure (a little more than eighteen months) and about his lifetime path of tears. Professor Dmytro Stepovyk recalled that Patriarch Volodymyr had laid the foundation on which Patriarch Filaret is building — with difficulty and “against the current” — the independent Ukrainian Church. The late Patriarch was neither diplomat nor politician: his passionate emotional nature relates him, to a certain extent, to the fathers of the early Christian church. He was a public figure rather than an eremite, he always stood against obscurantism and darkness. Film director Serhiy Arkhypchuk looked back on the Sophia Square events, where “the authorities of a very young state displayed their intentions about the future dialogue with people, namely, to crack down and trample on them.
But the point is not only in the powers that be: it is also telling that art has not yet found a place for the patriarch’s personality, for the circumstances of his death and funeral: “Everything is there — fog, dirt, and lies — but this.” Artist Volodymyr Harbuz spoke in the same vein, “Although our house is in a shambles, there still are such radiant spots as Patriarch Volodymyr. I do not think his death was accidental: there are people who have seen to it for ages that guides do not live too long among us.”
Father Volodymyr (Cherpak), dean of the Holy Veil Church at Podil, said, “The burial of Patriarch Volodymyr is a shame that still hangs over the people and the state. The Ukrainian patriarch must repose in St. Sophia’s Cathedral. But what can we do if even today you can walk across the capital of Ukraine without hearing or reading a single Ukrainian word. Everything around — newsstands, news agents, newspapers, street sales of books — is in Russian. Yet, there is some progress: they will no longer arrest you for a Ukrainian word. Let us not rail, either, against the condition in which our independent Orthodoxy is: we have been recognized in our own country, the church is being revived, so let us not incur God’s wrath.” Father Volodymyr recalled that the Patriarch, with whom he communicated a great deal, was very democratic; he would never refuse to receive visitors and kept saying, “When the church stands on its feet, there will be such thing as visiting hours. In the meantime, we must hear all who come to us at any time.” Father Volodymyr thinks it is not completely accidental that the Patriarch was born on the day the church commemorates St. Cosmus and St. Damian, “the holy ones without money:” the Patriarch was also a true “moneyless one” who never cared about material values for himself.
During the Taras Shevchenko Museum function, Natalia Klymenko presented the poem, “Lamenting for the Patriarch,” written seven years ago, immediately after the death and the “apocalyptic and outlandish beating on St. Sophia Square.” The poem has only been printed now by the Kyiv Mohyla Academy Publishers thanks to the financial and moral support of a few persons. (Something is not rotten in our state of Denmark!) The book has been laid out nicely and expressively by Volodymyr Harbuz, with photos of the St. Sophia Square events little known to the public at large. Natalia Klymenko thus begins her poem, “At nine o’clock p.m. on July 18, 1995, Patriarch Volodymyr lay unburied by the St. Sophia’s Cathedral walls... People stand over the unburied coffin. The rain comes down, with nobody to stop it. And the police also stand guard. As it were a nightmare... Everything like yesterday, but the year is another...”
