Tradition of perceiving Poltava as the spiritual capital of today's Ukraine dated down to the century before last at least. You see, when future Patriarch Mstyslav of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church came into the world in a quiet Trehubivska Street of Poltava on April 10, 1898 his native city was considered to be center of Ukrainian cultural life of the Left Bank Ukraine.
His mother called Mariamna was a sister of the outstanding fighter for the independence of Ukraine Symon Petliura. She got married to a native of Poltava Ivan Skrypnyk and gave birth to son Stepan. The family did have
hard fate. Stepan also had the brother Sylvester who would become a priest, too, but unlike he not abroad but in Soviet Ukraine. he was arrested several times by communist authorities, finally – in November 1937, whereupon he together with his aunts Maryna and Feodosia Petliura was executed in a stow near the village of Tryby not far from Poltava because he had allegedly created a “counter-revolutionary fascist organization Insurgent cleric Poltava region” that also was surprisingly associated with “anti-Soviet Zinovyev-Trotsky center”! Shooting was dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the October Revolution. In the fatal year of 1937, another son, Andriy, of Ivan Skrypnyk and Mariamna Petliura who worked as a veterinarian in Chernihiv has been shot. The youngest son of the Skrypnyk couple, Valerian, was arrested in 1937, and released from imprisonment as late as 1952. This is the way Bolshevists inflicted vengeance for kin relations to the Head Otaman of the Army of the Ukrainian People's Republic.
Stepan’s fate is likely the most interesting among those of the large Skrypnyk’s family. As a child he attended the Poltava First Classical Gymnasium, studied at the Officers' school based in Orenburg. He first served in Russian Imperial Army in 1916-1917, and then did in the Ukrainian one by being engaged in the 
national liberation struggle. He was wounded. In 1919, as young as in the age of 21, Stepan served as Ensign in combat army of the UPR under the command of Petliura, his famous uncle, served as first sergeant for special missions for the Head Otaman. Together with his uncle, he crossed Zbruch River with the Ukrainian army in late 1920 and landed up in Poland. Skrypnyk got there into the notorious internment camp in town of Kalisz. Released from the camp he went to Volhynia but the Polish government banished him from there. Then, Stepan moved to Galicia where he started working for the Ukrainian cultural and cooperative institutions. In 1930 he graduated from School of Political Sciences in Warsaw. In the 30’s Stepan was elected Deputy of the Polish Sejm from Ukrainian Volhynia to defend the rights of Ukrainian in Poland. In addition, Skrypnyk worked for cooperative institutions of Volhynia, belonged to the key members of the Volhynia Ukrainian association during the interwar period. At the same time, he participated in church and civic life by representing the laity in diocesan councils, by being a member of the Metropolitan Council and the initiator and chairman of “The Ukrainian School” in city of Rivne. During 1941, he headed the organization of aid and charity called Ukrainian Relief Committee.
In 1940 Stepan Skrypnyk became the Deputy Chairman of Kholm Diocesan Council headed by Metropolitan Ilarion (secular name Ivan Ogienko). In the autumn 1941 he was elected Deputy Chairman of the Ukrainian Church in Volhynia and acted as a contact for the All-Ukrainian Church Council in Kyiv. Having already been a
widower by the time, he decided to devote all the rest of his life to the Mother Church. Thus, in April 1942, Stepan Skrypnyk took diaconal ordinations and, later, those of priest. In early May of the same year he became a monk and was renamed Mstyslav. He was ordained as the Bishop Mstyslav of Pereiaslav. The consecration was accomplished by five bishops of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church led by the Bishop Nicanor at St Andrew the Apostle Cathedral Church of Kyiv on May, 14. In August 1942 the German occupation authorities prohibited Mstyslav to serve God and even be within Kyiv General Governorate. On October, 8 1942, he signed “the Act of Union” in Pochaiv resulted from negotiations with the Metropolitan Oleksiy (Hromadsky) of Autonomous Ukrainian Church to merge the two Churches. In the same month he was arrested by Nazis in Rivne and imprisoned in city of Chernihiv and town of Pryluky. In 1944 Mstyslav lived in Warsaw, next in Slovakia, later in Germany where he led the dioceses in Hessen, Württemberg.
In spring 1947, the Council of Bishops of the UAOC elevated the bishop Mstyslav to the rank of Archbishop. He moved to Canada in order to head the Ukrainian Greek Orthodox Church there. During the Unification Sobor (Council) of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in America held 1950 in New York on the initiative of the archbishop Mstyslav, he was elected Deputy Metropolitan of the UOC in the U.S. and Head of the Consistory.
Thank to the Metropolitan Mstyslav, the Church has almost miraculously managed to purchase an estate in South Bound Brook not far from New York City, which he has built a Memorial Church Complex, which houses the Consistory, printing, library, museum, seminary of St. Sophia, Memorial Church of Martyrs for the freedom of Ukraine, the editorial office of the magazine “Ukrainian Orthodox Word”.
In 1965 the Metropolitan Mstyslav headed the UAOC in Diaspora. In 1963 and 1971 he met Ecumenical 
Patriarch and brought up the issue of the canonical recognition of the Ukrainian Diaspora Church and the restitution of its rights (Exarchate) which ones it enjoyed before 1686, where the Kyiv Metropolis illegally moved from the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople to the Patriarchate of Moscow.
This is Metropolitan Mstyslav who was elected in absentia as the first Patriarch of Kyiv and all Ukraine of the UAOC on June 6, 1990. The enthronement took place on November 6, 1990 in St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv. During the Ukrainian Orthodox Council 1992 Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church were merged into a single Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Kyiv Patriarchate while recognizing him as the Primate.
The Patriarch Mstyslav died in Grimsby, Canada on June 11, 1993 and buried at the cemetery in South Bound Brook, USA.
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