Makary

Metropolitan Macarius, secular name Mykhailo Fedorovych Oksiyuk (, ; 29 September 1884 – 1 March 1961) was a Ukrainian religious leader in Poland and the Soviet Union, a primate of the Polish Orthodox Church as Metropolitan of Warsaw and all Poland. Even though his brother Joseph was a bishop of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church in the 1920s, following the World War II, Mykhailo Oksiyuk made an excellent career as a religious functionary. As Metropolitan of Warsaw and All Poland, Macarius did not accept a Polish citizenship, remaining a citizen of the Soviet Union. in 1897-1901 he studied at the Warsaw Theological School. In 1907 he graduated the Chełm Theological Seminary where one of his teachers was Dionysius (Waledyński). In 1911 Oksiyuk graduated the Kiev Theological Academy as a candidate of Theology and later stayed in the academy acting as a docent of the Department of Old Christian Literature (Patrology and Byzantinology). Those were territories dominated by Greek-Catholics, but in order to statistically increase number of Orthodox faithful, Ternopil Oblast was established with territories of southern Volhynia which contained Pochaiv Lavra.

In April 1945 the Russian Orthodox Church Holy Synod appointed protoiereus Mykhailo Oksiyuk a bishop of Lvov-Ternopol. On 20 April he was tonsured as Macarius in a rank of archimandrite and on 22 April he was ordained as bishop at the Yelokhovo Cathedral by Patriarch Alexy I of Moscow, Metropolitan of Kiev and Galicia John (Sokolov), Bishop of Chișinău and All Moldova Hieronim (Zakharov). Oksiyuk was vouched by the People's Commissar of State Security (NKVD) of Ukrainian SSR General-Lieutenant Sergei Savchenko to the head of the 2nd Directorate of NKVD (counterintelligence) Pyotr Fedotov. Those documents also indicated that Oksiyuk was sent to Western Ukraine deliberately for the "liquidation of uniates" (Uniates those who joined the Union of Brest).

Through his fluency in Ukrainian language, Macarius was effective in earning trust among Greek Catholic clergy. He was an honorary guest at a gathering knows as "Lvov Assembly" on 6 March 1946 where the Union of Brest was proclaimed invalid. On 9 March he played a key role in organization of the "unification of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church with the Russian Orthodox Church".