Macedonian Orthodox Church canonizes new saints

Skopje, April 12, 2024

St. Stefanida of Bitola. Photo: orthodul.wordpress.com St. Stefanida of Bitola. Photo: orthodul.wordpress.com The Holy Synod of the Macedonian Orthodox Church-Ohrid Archbishopric met yesterday, April 11.

Among their decisions, the hierarchs resolved to canonize three new saints, reports liturgija.mk. The report reads:

The Synod, upon the proposal of the Synodal Commission for the Canonization of Saints, decided to include in the diptychs of Holy Hierarchs and Confessors the Righteous Spase and Spasa Višenski and the Venerable-Martyr Stefanida of Bitola.

The Macedonian Synod previously canonized two saints in March 2022.

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Tradition says that Sts. Spase and Spasa were brother and sister, orphans, who fled from the Turks and settled in inaccessible terrains. St. Spasa went to a cave church in Višni, where she spent her ascetic life and where she rested in peace. Long after her death, one sleepless night, the saint appeared to a woman named Maria, a Christian from Belica who was immobile, asking for mercy for the peace of her soul: “Tell the people of Višni to gather my bones for I have no peace!” After appearing a second time, Maria gained a strange strength and together with her brother, they set out in the darkness to find the relics. And at that moment, while wrapping the relics to carry them to the church in the village, she was filled with joy, her step became light, and her painful and stiff posture became unusually nimble and easy.

St. Stefanida, a great contemporary ascetic, was originally from the region of Shkodër. Her baptismal name was Stevka Đurčević. When the Serbs were expelled from Albania in 1933, she moved to Kosovo. She took her monastic vows at the Bogdaj orphanage in Bitola, where she passed away in 1945 from wounds inflicted by the Germans. Her relics are located in the Monastery of St. Christopher near Bitola.

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4/12/2024

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