Cancun, June 18, 2019
On Sunday, the feast of Holy Pentecost, the founding meeting of a new Orthodox parish was held in Cancun. The Moscow Patriarchate parish is the city’s first. There are several thousand people from traditionally Orthodox countries living near the resort city.
Eleven people were present at the meeting and decided to establish an official parish in honor of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. An initiative group previously planned to name the parish in honor of St. John of Kronstadt, but in the end it was decided otherwise, reports Pravoslavie.ru.
Edward Korshunov, a native of the Russian city of Volgograd living in Mexico for 5 years, was chosen as the head of the parish. An assistant and treasurer were also selected.
The initiative group was created by Olga Mirghani, who began collecting signatures for the creation of an Orthodox parish in Cancun in February. Fr. Sergei Malashkin from the Church of the Holy Martyr Zenaida in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, strongly supported Olga’s desire to found a church, and the collected signatures were later sent to the Moscow Patriarchate. As a result, with the blessing of His Grace Bishop Matthew of Surozh, currently managing the Patriarchal Parishes in the U.S. and Mexico, Fr. Kyrill Chakon began to serve the community in Cancun.
As OrthoChristian previously reported, Fr. Kyrill served the first Liturgy in the history of Cancun on May 1. He also serves in the churches in San Juan del Rio and Mexico City, the latter of which was vandalized in late May.
A short video was made of the first Liturgy:
Even before the parish’s founding assembly, the initiative group for its creation began to carry out social work, in particular, providing assistance to Dmitry Sukharov, a citizen of Latvia who is serving a sentence in a local prison. The faithful have sent him money from their personal funds, and Fr. Kyrill personally visited Sukharov in early May.
The parish is currently raising funds to bring Fr. Kyrill to serve the next Liturgy, which is scheduled for this month. The priest lives more than 700 miles away, and each flights costs $230.
A GoFundMe page has been established to accept donations to help fund Fr. Kyrill’s visits to the parish.
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