Authors

Discussion

Kyiv diocese was a pioneer of the new institution of diocesan congresses starting in the late 1860s.  In the early 20^th century, Metropolitan Flavian (Gorodetskii) of Kyiv actively encouraged discussions of collaborative pastoral work and reforming the parish.  The result was a landmark 1903 diocesan congress with an agenda that expanded beyond the normal administration of the various clerical mutual aid institutions of the diocese to address wider questions of church administration and pastoral work. This paper explores the lively discussion among parish clergy leading up to the 1903 congress, the event itself, and its echoes and development in the subsequent 1904 and 1905 (“revolutionary”) congresses.  Woven into the discussions around these events were questions about Ukrainian local traditions and whether they could contribute to the reform of the Russian church as a whole.