Stefan Ustvolsky

Who is Stefan Ustvolsky?

Stefan Ustvolsky was a Russian Orthodox priest excommunicated from the Most Holy Synod in Saint Petersburg and pretend bishop in early Ukrainian Canadian history. He called himself Bishop Seraphim, Metropolitan of the Orthodox Russian Church for the whole of America and started the All-Russian Patriarchal Orthodox Church in 1903 in Winnipeg. His claim of consecration was backed by forged documentation and the church eventually fell apart around 1908.

On Mount Athos there existed and still exists a Russian enclave. What little is known about Ustvolsky’s life before his arrival in Canada, John Bodrug tells in his memoir: “On Athos, living out his life and fast approaching the grave, was the aged Patriarch Anphim. That Patriarch, like the other Patriarchs, disliked Russian Orthodoxy for the reason that in Russia the Tsars had abolished the Patriarchate and substituted themselves as heads of the Orthodox Church. In the monastery at Athos, there lived a Master of Theology, Father Stephen Ustvolsky, who had previously been a Court priest in St. Petersburg. When his wife deserted him to live with a Polish Colonel, Ustvolsky became a monk on Athos.