Vitaly Ustinov
Metropolitan Vitaly, born Rostislav Petrovich Ustinov on 18 March 1910 in Saint Petersburg, lived a long life of church leadership. He was the fourth First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) from 1985 to 2001 and then led ROCOR in exile as First Hierarch of ROCOR-V until his death in 2006. He passed away in Magog, Quebec, Canada.
Vitaly came from a military family. His father was a naval officer, and his mother was the daughter of a regional police chief. When the Russian Civil War began, his family moved to Crimea in 1920. There he joined a cadet corps led by General Wrangel. The group moved first to Istanbul and then to Yugoslavia. In 1923 his mother took him to Istanbul and then moved to Paris, where he studied at the Saint Louis College in Le Mans. After his schooling, he lived with his mother in Cannes.
In 1934 he joined the army, serving in the Ninth Cuirassier Regiment. He chose not to continue a military career as an officer and decided to become a monk. Four years later, he arrived at the Monastery of Saint Job of Pochayev in Ladomirová, in the Carpathian Mountains (then part of Czechoslovakia). In 1939 he was ordained a monk and took the name Vitaly; he received the Little Schema a year later.
World War II forced the monks to move to Germany. Vitaly lived in Berlin, then Hamburg, where he and other monks worked to help Russian refugees and prisoners of war. They organized church services, formed a small monastic community, and set up a printing house to produce church books for camp churches in Germany.
From 1947 to 1951 Vitaly served as thePrior of the London parish. In 1951 he was consecrated Bishop of São Paulo as a vicar of the Brazilian diocese. He established a printing house and a shelter for boys training as acolytes for the church services. In 1955 he and his brotherhood moved to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. There they built the Dormition Monastery and he became the ruling bishop of Montreal and Canada. He founded a skete in Mansonville, Quebec, and in Montreal he built a large cathedral. A well-run printing house there published service books and the Orthodox Bulletin.
When Metropolitan Philaret died in 1985, Vitaly was elected Metropolitan of Eastern America and New York on 22 January 1986, while still managing the Canadian diocese. In 2001, citing ill health, he retired and moved to the Holy Transfiguration Monastery in Mansonville with his supporters.
After a new leader, Metropolitan Laurus, was chosen for ROCOR, Vitaly issued a message saying he still considered himself ROCOR’s primate. This led some clergy to form a separate group around Vitaly, calling themselves ROCOR-Vitaly. The ROCOR bishops said Vitaly was being kept from contact and could not speak for himself, so his exact position remained unclear. A court case about Vitaly’s health received media attention, but a court later found no unusual health issues.
Vitaly died on 25 September 2006 and was buried at his Mansonville skete by clergy from the Russian Orthodox Church in Exile. The ROCOR bishops did not attend his funeral, holding their services separately.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 12:34 (CET).