King George Island, Antarctica, February 6, 2020
Photo: pln-pskov.ru
Holy Trinity Church near Bellingshausen Station on King George Island, Antarctica is the southernmost Orthodox church in the world.
However, as a parish of the Russian Orthodox Church, it maintains a strong spiritual link with faraway Russia, including the far-northern Pskov Caves Monastery.
In honor of the 200th anniversary of the discovery of Antarctica by Thaddeus Bellinghausen in 1820, a hand-painted icon of Sts. Jonah and Vassa of the Pskov Caves Monastery, together with a copy of the world-famous book Everyday Saints by His Eminence Metropolitan Tikhon (Shevkunov) of Pskov and Porkhov, were gifted to the church, reports pln-pskov.ru.
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The icon was sent at the initiative of the Governor of the Pskov Province Mikhail Vedernikov with the support of the Pskov branch of the Russian Geographical Society.
Speaking of the gift, RUSARC polar captain Daniel Gavrilov said, “Faith has a place everywhere. We, sailors, pray on the ship, despite the fact that we are professionals... But you pray that nothing bad will happen. It’s the same at the polar station—people work in difficult conditions: constant winter, something could always break, you rely only on yourself, supplies come once a year. But you can’t explain everything with logic. Of course, someone is looking out for us from above.”
Holy Trinity Church was built in 2004 and consecrated in 2014. His Holiness Patriarch Kirill visited and served Divine Liturgy in the church in 2016.
