MOGHILA, PIETRO. – Metropolitan of Kiev from 1633 to 1646. Famous as the author of an Orthodox Confession. Born on 21 Dec. 1596 (Old Style) in Moldavia into a noble Romanian family (Movilă). He studied in Moldavia and then at the school of the confraternity in Lviv (hostile to the Union of Brest, 1595), possibly also abroad. In 1627 he entered the famous Cave Monastery in Kiev, of which he became archimandrite in the same year, and there founded, in 1631, a school that was elevated to an academy in 1633, on the model of the later (1701) Kiev Ecclesiastical Academy. Died on 22 Dec. 1646.
M. carried out an untiring pastoral activity—not being a speculative theologian—in Poland during the first half of the 17th century, to strengthen the Greek-Russian Church in its struggle against Protestants and against both Latin and Byzantine Catholics. Negotiations on Union with Pope Urban VIII (between 1636 and 1643) were unsuccessful. As means of pastoral activity he employed influential confraternities, schools, printing houses—especially that of the Cave Monastery—hospitals, and churches. He fought against abuses and published a large number of liturgical and religious writings.
His principal writings are: The Great Catechism (the so-called “Confession of Faith of P. M.”). It was conceived to neutralize the Protestant influence of the Confession of the Patriarch of Constantinople Cyril Lukaris. First drafted in the vernacular and in Latin (a copy of the Latin autograph is found in ms. Parisinus 1265, published by Malvy and Viller), it was submitted to a Synod of Kiev, convened by M. in 1640. Since there were divergences on certain points (e.g., on the state of souls after death, on the form of the Eucharist), the work was, in order to obtain the approval of the Patriarch of Constantinople, examined at a meeting of five theologians (3 from Kiev, 2 Greeks; among the latter Melchisedec Syrigos), held in 1642 at Iași. After making some corrections in the Latin text, Syrigos translated it into vernacular Greek and submitted it for approval to the Patriarch of Constantinople, which was granted by his Synod (1643) and confirmed with the signatures of the other three Eastern patriarchs. The work was printed, and only in Greek, for the first time in 1667 at Amsterdam. Later numerous editions and translations into several languages followed. However, the Confession thus disseminated in many points did not correspond to the doctrine of the author. Hence M. published (Cave Monastery, Kiev 1645) his Small Catechism as a summary of the Great one, under a very long title: *Little Collection of Doctrine*, etc. It had editions in Polish, Ukrainian, and Slavonic. On the divergences between the two catechisms, see Malvy and Viller (pp. cxiv–cxxx). *Trebnik* or *Euchologion* (ritual), with which he exercised notable influence on the Russian Church, which adopted it in 1757. M. introduced several new rubrics into the Missal and Ritual, in contrast to the theses of Greek anti-Catholic polemicists. In response to the polemical work of the Uniate theologian Cassian Sakowicz, *Ἐπανόρθωσις ὀνείρων*, etc. (Cracow 1642), he published or had published, under the name of Εὐσεβής ποιμήν (“Pious Shepherd”), *Ἄθως* or *Stone Cast*, etc. (Cave Monastery, Kiev 1644). M. acknowledges the existence of abuses but attributes them to the persecutions to which his Church is subjected, and strenuously defends the Byzantine Ritual, also addressing the controversial issues between Catholics and dissenting Easterners.
The theological school of M. became the center of Greek-Russian theology and was attended by Russians, Greeks, Romanians, Serbs, and Bulgarians. It taught in Latin, following St. Thomas and the scholastic method. Apart from the primacy of the pope, the doctrines taught there were Latinizing (they agreed with Catholic doctrine on purgatory, the Immaculate Conception of Mary, the words of Christ as the form of the Eucharist, etc.). Malvy and Viller think (op. cit. in bibliography, p. xvii) that even the doctrine of M.’s Confession (Part 1, Question 71) on the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father alone (“sicut a fonte et principio Divinitatis”) is susceptible of a Catholic interpretation. This seems true of the tenor of the wording, though not so much of the context. In the *Trebnik* M. acknowledges, among other things, the validity of infusion baptism, rejects the re-confirmation of the Apostles, teaches on penance, satisfaction, and temporal penance due for sin after forgiveness, in agreement with Catholic teaching.