Archpriest Peter Guryanov is the rector of the Church of the Queen of All Icon of the Mother of God in Dimitrovgrad, Ulyanovsk Province, Russia. He also serves as head of the Information and Publishing Department of the Melekess Diocese, Chairman of the Diocesan Commission on Family, Protection of Motherhood and Childhood, and member of the Dimitrovgrad city Cultural Council.
Archpriest Peter Guryanov. Photo: radiovera.ru
I’ve been working with women’s health clinics in Dimitrovgrad for ten years now. My ministry is to talk with women who’ve come to have an abortion and to try to do everything to get them to change their minds. They can call me at any time and ask me to come urgently. And there’s no one to fill in for me.
One day I left to take entrance exams for postgraduate studies at the Moscow Theological Academy. Suddenly they called me from the clinic, but I was already hundreds of miles from Dimitrovgrad. I started calling priests I know, but in vain: Some were busy, some didn’t answer. I decided to talk to the girl on the phone. I found out that her husband was insisting on terminating the pregnancy. I tried my best to talk her out of it: “Listen, every child comes at its own time ... exactly when its needed and exactly the kind that you need. You can’t build happiness on the blood of killed children. Abortion is a man’s sin too...” All to no avail. What could I do?
I started praying to St. Sergius of Radonezh. My head was a total mess: I had to study, exams were coming, and here was this girl, an abortion! I asked the priests and laity who were there with me for help, and they prayed for her the whole eight days that I was at the Academy. And I kept calling her, texting her, but she was adamant…
Then came the day of my last exam and the day she was scheduled for an abortion. I decided to call one last time. She was already in the operating room and said she hadn’t changed her mind. That was it. The end.
I took my exam, and as I was sitting waiting for the results, I got a text from her: “I couldn’t do it.” I can’t even describe how all those of us who had been praying felt at that moment!
Then I met this young mother, baptized her baby, and I found out that when her husband found out that she had refused to have an abortion, he left her. But it was a blessing in disguise: She met a decent man and before the Nativity Fast, and I celebrated their Wedding. We still keep in touch.
