Borovlyany, Belarus, May 8, 2020
Photo: tyt.by
While the coronavirus pandemic has claimed a number of victims amongst Orthodox clergy and monastics in recent weeks, it is also noteworthy that many others have fully recovered from their complications due to the virus.
For example, on Wednesday, May 6, a 91-year-old cleric of the Belarusian Orthodox Church, Archpriest Vasily Lesko, was discharged from the hospital in Borovlyani in the Minsk Region where he was treated for 24 days after being found positive for the coronavirus, reports Tut.by.
He spent seven of those 24 days on a ventilator in the ICU. After being released from the hospital, he returned to his native Polesie.
He had recently been living at St. Elisabeth’s Monastery in Minsk.
“I couldn’t endure this hospital anymore,” Fr. Vasily says. “I wanted to go home, rest, and keep living in this world.”
“I crossed myself, I bowed, the lampadas are burning, the icons are hung, and I’m good now,” he commented.
Fr. Vasily was also hospitalized with pneumonia last year, and he recently underwent surgery to have his pacemaker replaced.
In late April, the Belarusian Church lost its first cleric to the coronavirus—Fr. Gennady Butko. On the same day that Fr. Vasily was released from the hospital, another one of the oldest clerics of the Belarusian Church, Archpriest John Horoshevich, reposed in the Lord following a serious illness.
