KIEV, Ukraine — Dressed in a simple burgundy cassock, flashing the occasional gold-toothed smile and speaking in soothing tones, Patriarch Filaret does not come off like a master of this country's religious scene, a rough-and-tumble world where Orthodox Christianity and post-Soviet politics meet.

But Patriarch Filaret, the 71-year-old head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kiev Patriarchate, is arguably Ukraine's most powerful religious leader, the architect of a plan to give this mostly Orthodox country of 49 million people a legitimate, independent Orthodox Church.

As Patriarch Filaret explained in a recent interview, “Ukraine is an independent government. The biggest Church is Orthodox. It is not natural for that biggest Church, which is independent of the Ukrainian government, to be dependent on a Church in another country … Therefore, sooner or later, this question must be decided.”

The Moscow-based Russian Orthodox Church has for centuries claimed Ukraine — along with a vast swath of the world from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean — as its canonical territory. As long as Ukraine was part of the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union, Moscow's claim went unchallenged.

But now, independent Ukraine is home to three rival Orthodox Churches: Patriarch Filaret's Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kiev Patriarchate, the smaller Ukrainian Auto-cephalous Orthodox Church and the considerably larger Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate, part of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Of the three, only the Moscow Patriarchate is accepted as legitimate by the rest of Orthodoxy, the world's second largest Christian communion after Catholicism. Ukraine's two smaller Orthodox Churches are in schism, having broken away from Moscow.

In the last 18 months, Patriarch Filaret's nine-year campaign has picked up significant momentum. First, Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma put his political weight behind the unification of Ukraine's Orthodox Churches.

Then, world Orthodoxy's first among equals, Ecumenical Patriarch and Archbishop of Constantinople Bartholomew I, started working to broker a unification deal between Patriarch Filaret and the Autocephalous Church, holding out possible canonical status for a new Ukrainian Church.

And finally, Pope John Paul II decided to make a historic visit to Ukraine this month, when he is widely expected to meet with Patriarch Filaret and other religious leaders. Such a meeting would boost Patriarch Filaret's credibility. According to a Canadian expert on Eastern Christianity, the Pope's five-day visit might well “create a pro-Ukrainian momentum that Constantinople could ride” in its bid to bring the smaller two Orthodox Churches together.

“Things being volatile the way they are in Ukraine, who knows what kinds of things might change in the next few months,” said Peter Galadza, a Ukrainian Catholic priest at the Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies at St. Paul University in Ottawa.

Russian Orthodox Rage

All these developments infuriate leaders of the 80 million-member Russian Orthodox Church, by far the largest Orthodox Church in the world. More than 1,000 people in Moscow marched to the Kremlin walls May 12 to protest the Pope's visit to Ukraine. About 400 Orthodox staged a similar demonstration in Kiev May 17.

Some Russian Orthodox Church leaders smell a conspiracy between Rome and Constantinople.

“Certainly the pontiff's visit will coincide with a new attempt to break up the Russian Orthodox Church and create an independent Ukrainian Church by means of the interference of Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, who is known for his pro-Catholic orientation,” said Bishop Ippolit in an April interview with the Kremlin-linked Web site www.strana.ru.

Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexei II expressed similar sentiments in late May. “Unfortunately, the Pope's visit will not bring soothing and pacification between religious groups in Ukraine, but will bring further aggravation,” said Patriarch Alexei, Associated Press reported.

The stakes are high. Ukraine is the spiritual breadbasket of the Russian Orthodox Church. Nearly half the Russian Orthodox Church's parishes are located in Ukraine, a country with almost one-third the population of Russia. Kiev, where local Slav princes first accepted Orthodoxy in 988, has huge historical significance to Russian Orthodox believers.

For the leading hierarchs in Moscow, Patriarch Filaret is an especially odious figure in the battle for control of Ukraine, partly because Filaret was once one of them. In 1990, after years of leading the Church in Ukraine, he was a top candidate in balloting to become the new Russian Orthodox patriarch. But as Ukraine declared its independence from the crumbling Soviet Union, Patriarch Filaret did the same with the Russian Orthodox Church.

Now he stands defrocked, excommunicated and anathematized by Moscow for the break.

Today, Patriarch Filaret's Church has about 3,000 parishes. Moscow has 9,000 in Ukraine, and the Autocephalous Church has slightly more than 1,000, according to Ukrainian government statistics.

Constantinople's Role

Given Moscow's intransigence, only the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople seems capable of granting the Autocephalous and Kiev Patriachate Churches canonical status.

So far, Patriarch Bartholomew is acting with caution. Hopeful rumors abound within Ukraine's breakaway Orthodox Churches that Patriarch Bartholomew will visit Ukraine this year. But in a fax to Religion News Service May 18, Metropolitan Meliton of the Ecumenical Patriarchate wrote that Bartholomew “has judged that the conditions are not ripe for such a visit. Consequently, at present there is no such plan or program, only good will on both sides.”

In Estonia, a former Soviet republic on the Baltic Sea which the Moscow Patriarchate considers its territory, Constantinople took one group of anti-Moscow Orthodox parishes under its jurisdiction in 1996, declaring that it took the action “as a tender mother has accepted the free and unanimous request of her children.”

The Moscow Patriarchate reacted swiftly by breaking communion with Constantinople and dropping the Ecumenical Patriarch's name from the Divine Liturgy for the first time in centuries. The break lasted from February to May 1996. Relations are still shaky over Estonia, where both Churches now share jurisdiction and are searching for a permanent solution.

With just 84 Orthodox parishes, Estonia is tiny compared to Ukraine. Said Father Galadza, “The fact that Moscow and Constantinople could break communion over a Church as small and insignificant as Estonia, suggests that Ukraine would be the equivalent of an H-bomb falling on Moscow-Constantinople relations.”