Orthodox America

  The Cry of the New Martyrs -  St. John of Kronstadt Convent Reopened

      The St. John of Rila women's monastery in Petersburg, founded by St. John of Kronstadt, has recently been returned to the Church and is now functioning, with 14 nuns, as a dependency of the flourishing Piukhtitsa Dormition Convent in Estonia. The return of the convent may be seen as a step towards the glorification of St. John, plans for which were officially disclosed at a Council meeting of the Moscow Patriarchate in October. St. John was glorified by the Church Abroad in 1964, but although he has always been widely venerated in Russia as a saint, his prophetic warnings of the evils to be perpetrated by the communist revolution have delayed his official glorification by the Moscow Patriarchate until this era of glasnost.

      Even while occupied by an institute the convent was a popular place of pilgrimage, although no one seems to know the precise location of St. John's relics. The place where they reposed since his death in 1908 is marked today by a cement slab in his sepulchre beneath the convent church. The convent is located on Karpovka, within walking distance of the Petrogradskaya metro station.