Orthodox Patriarch Filaret of Kyiv has died at 97. He is remembered for his work to establish an independent Ukrainian Orthodox church that was free from Moscow’s religious authority. Filaret had a more limited role in recent years as the cultural and religious divide between Ukraine and Russia widened into full-scale warfare. But Metropolitan Epiphanius of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine hailed him as doing “much to preserve church life” during Soviet oppression and in later efforts to establish an independent church. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called Filaret “a strong personality and one of the most steadfast defenders of the Ukrainian church, independence and statehood.”