Epifaniy wears vestments once belonging to John of Kronstadt – OCU cleric

Epifaniy wearing vestments previously owned by Denysenko. Collage: the UOJ

OCU head Epifaniy Dumenko celebrated a “liturgy” wearing vestments that St. John of Kronstadt presented to one of the hierarchs in 1902. According to OCU cleric Ivan Sydor, Dumenko inherited the vestments from Filaret Denysenko.

Denysenko wore these same vestments during his patriarchal “enthronement” in 1995 and while serving at celebrations marking the 1,000th anniversary of the Baptism of Rus’.

The vestments may previously have belonged either to Hieromartyr Metropolitan Vladimir (Bogoyavlensky), who was executed by the Bolsheviks, or to Metropolitan John (Sokolov). According to another account, Filaret Denysenko may have obtained them after the death of Patriarch Alexy I, whose private quarters he attended at the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius.

In addition to the vestments, Dumenko wore an antique mitre believed to have been given to Filaret during his obedience at the Patriarchate of Alexandria in the 1960s, as well as a set of panagias bearing a surviving dedicatory inscription on the reverse. The inscription indicates that they belonged to Metropolitan John (Sokolov) of Kyiv and Galicia and is dated 1955.

The UOJ previously reported that Dumenko appeared in public wearing a panagia that had belonged to a patriarchal exarch of the Russian Orthodox Church.

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