Vydybida-Rudenko, Palladii

Vydybida-Rudenko, Palladii [Видибіда-Руденко, Палладій; secular name: Петро; Petro], b 29 June 1891 in Strilchyntsi, Bratslav county, Podilia gubernia, d 1 September 1971 in Sea View, Staten Island, New York State. Orthodox church and community leader. He graduated from the Kamianets-Podilskyi Theological Seminary and the mathematics faculty of Kyiv University (1916) and then worked in the co-operative movement in Vinnytsia. An active member of the Society of Ukrainian Progressives and a delegate to the Central Rada, he was made director of the finance department of the government of the Ukrainian National Republic in November 1918 and deputy finance minister in 1919. After moving to Polish-occupied Volhynia, he was ordained in 1921 and served as a parish priest and member of the church consistory. In 1934 he moved to Warsaw and became secretary of the metropolitan's office and administrator of the Polish Autocephalous Orthodox church's pension fund. In 1935 Vydybida-Rudenko took monastic vows and was named an archimandrite soon after. In February 1941 he was ordained in Warsaw as archbishop of Cracow and the Lemko region. He was subsequently also named bishop of Lviv (see Lviv eparchy), and was elected chancellor of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox church in the Generalgouvernement. A postwar refugee, he lived in Germany from 1944 (in Passau, Munich, and Regensburg), before settling in the United States in 1950. From 1951 to his death he headed the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church in Exile.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]