Yarmus, Stepan

Yarmus, Stepan or Jarmus, Stephan [Ярмусь, Степан; Jarmus'], b 25 May 1925 in Lidykhiv, Kremenets county, Volhynia gubernia, d 8 April 2015 in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Orthodox church leader. An Ostarbeiter in Nazi Germany between 1942 and 1944, Yarmus was a displaced person after the Second World War and settled in England in 1948. There he studied pastoral theology and was ordained in 1956. He moved to Canada in 1960 and continued his study of theology at Saint Andrew's College in Winnipeg, the University of Winnipeg, and the San Francisco Theological Seminary (PH D, 1981). He served as a rural parish priest in Manitoba and Saskatchewan before becoming a lecturer (from 1969) and then a professor (from 1977) at Saint Andrew's College, where he taught until 2004; he also served as the College’s dean from 1995 to 1998. Yarmus edited Visnyk (Winnipeg), the official bulletin of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Canada (UOCC) (1969–75), as well as Vira i kul’tura (from 1981). From 1985 to 1990 he served as head of the presidium of the UOCC consistory. In this capacity, he played a vital role in the forging of ties between the UOCC and the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. At the same time, he continued to serve as parish priest for the parish in Kenora, Ontario. Yarmus wrote several works on the history of Ukrainian philosophy, including a study of the 19th-century philosopher Pamfil Yurkevych (1979) and a monograph on the spirituality of the Ukrainian nation (1983). He also published collections of Yurkevych’s writings, textbooks on homiletics and general theology, and works on the history of the Ukrainian church. In independent Ukraine Yarmus was honored with the titles of Honorary Research Fellow of the Institute of Philosophy of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, as well as professor emeritus titles at Kyiv Orthodox Theological Academy (Kyiv Patriarchate) and Volhynia National University.

Marko Robert Stech

[This article was updated in 2024.]