Yaroslav Skrypnyk, a Ukrainian public figure in Canada and the son of Patriarch Mstyslav Skrypnyk, has died at the age of one hundred years.
According to Novynarnya, the Lviv Diocese of the OCU announced this on October 14 on Facebook.
"Today, at the age of 101 years, Fr Yaroslav Skprypnyk, the eldest son of Patriarch Mstyslav, who lived in Edmonton (Canada), passed away to be with the Lord.
He left his wife Sofia, son Ostap, daughter Ksenia and a loving large family of relatives and friends in grief,” the message reads.
Believers express their condolences to Skrypnyk's family.
As you know, Yaroslav Skrypnyk's father, His Holiness Patriarch Mstyslav of Kyiv and all Rus-Ukraine (1990-1993), secular name Stepan Skrypnyk was the nephew – son of the sister – chief Ataman of the UPR Simon Petliura and an active state, military and church figure since the 1920s. In exile in the United States, he became the Primate of the UAOC. He had a son and two daughters.
Yaroslav Skrypnyk came to Canada after World War II, in 1948. Yaroslav devoted his whole life to creating a Ukrainian cause, either in the cultural or financial spheres (implementing the idea of introducing credit unions). Every year he came to Ukraine to be in the rhythm of life in his homeland. He bought an apartment with his wife in Kyiv.
In 2010, he said in an interview with the newspaper “Day”: “My youngest son is an advocate of everything Ukrainian, works in many patriotic organizations, his wife is from Lviv. My daughter's children speak Ukrainian with their mother and English with their father, and my son's children speak only Ukrainian. With us, grandparents, all our grandchildren speak exclusively Ukrainian, they do not hesitate to address my wife and me in their native language in any environment, because they know that there is no other way.”