Krasnodar, August 12, 2020
On August 8, 2020, the feast day of St. Moses the Hungarian of the Kiev Caves, it was reported that eighty-year-old Metropolitan Isidor (Kyrichenko) of Ekaterinodar and the Kuban has reposed in the Lord after suffering from COVID.
Nicholai Vasilievich Kirichenko was born in Saint Petersburg on May 25, 1941. He attended St. Petersburg Theological Academy, where on January 3, 1967, he was tonsured as a monk with the name Isidore by Metropolitan Nikodim (Rotov), and later ordained by the same hierarch as a deacon on February 5, and as a hieromonk on April 7, 1967. From 1970 to 1977 he served throughout northwestern Russia.
On June 18, 1977, he was elected Bishop of Arkhangelsk and remained there until 1987, when he moved from Russia’s far north to her far south, as he was elected Bishop of Krasnodar and the Kuban. Krasnodar (meaning “gift of the reds”) was the Soviet name for the city of Ekaterinodar, (meaning “gift of [Saint] Catherine), and the name of the diocese was changed back to its pre-revolutionary city title on April 3, 2001.
In 2007, Met. Isidore travelled to the U.S. as part of an official delegation of the Russian Orthodox Church, in honor of the reunification of the ROCOR with the Moscow Patriarchate. The delegation visited major cities in the U.S., then continued on to Australia and Europe, everywhere accompanied by the singing of the Moscow Sretensky Monastery choir.
Vladyka Isidore was elevated to the dignity of Archbishop in 1989, and made Metropolitan in 2001.
From 2008 until his repose, he held the position of chairman of the High Ecclesiastical Court.
Eternal Memory!
