Minsk, June 3, 2019
St. John (Maximovitch), numbered among the American saints, is beloved and venerated throughout the Orthodox world. The most recent example of this love is the consecration of a new church in honor of St. John at St. Elizabeth’s Monastery in Minsk.
The Divine Liturgy and rite of Great Consecration of the Church of St. John were celebrated on Sunday by His Eminence Metropolitan Pavel of Minsk and Zaslavl, with the concelebration of the visiting retired hierarch His Eminence Archbishop Mikhail (Onskov), reports the press service of the Belarusian Church.
Also serving were Archpriest Andrew Lemenoshok, the confessor of St. Elizabeth’s Convent, Archpriest Andrei Sommer from the ROCOR Synodal Cathedral in New York, and other local and invited clergy.
Following the service, Met. Pavel congratulated the parishioners and clergy with the feast and addressed the worshipers with a word of edification. He also gave the monastery one of the altar Gospels given by His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia for newly-consecrated churches in the Belarusian Exarchate.
All those present were given icons of the Holy Hierarch and Wonderworker John of San Francisco.
The church stands on the territory of the National Mental Health Centre and provides the patients of the center with an opportunity to visit the church with their friends and relatives, to attend at the Divine Liturgy, and to partake of Holy Communion. It is also planned to organize special handwork courses for the patients, who often face difficulties with returning to their previous work.
The Centre treats 25,000 patients annually from throughout Belarus.
In addition to the monastery and churches named in his honor in America, OrthoChristian has also reported on a chapel named for St. John in Greece, a skete named in his honor in Ukraine, an altar named in his honor in Romania, and a cultural-educational center named in his honor in Russia.
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