John of Shanghai and San Francisco

Mikhail Maximovitch was born in 1896 in the village of Adamovka of the Izyumsky Uyezd of the Kharkov Governorate of the Russian Empire (in present-day eastern Ukraine).

Growing up Mikhail was a sickly child who was deeply devout and used to collect icons and church books. He was captivated by the lives of saints; even in play he would pretend toy soldiers were monks and fortresses were monasteries. His piety impressed his French caretaker so much that she converted from Catholicism to Orthodox Christianity.[1]

Maximovitch attended Poltava Military School from 1907 to 1914. Later he attended and received a degree in law from Kharkov Imperial University in 1918. He studied well and attended church in Kharkiv, where he was inspired by metropolitan Antony Khrapovitsky to go deeper into his spiritual learnings.

He later recalled that the local monastery had become more important in his life than the secular institutions. Maximovitch was a patriot of his fatherland and was profoundly disappointed by what he saw as human weakness and impermanence during the tragic events of the 1917 revolution. As a result, he made the decision to dedicate his life to serving God.

His family sought refuge in Yugoslavia and brought him to Belgrade in 1921. In 1925 he graduated from Belgrade University with a degree in theology.[2] To support his impoverished family, he would sell newspapers.

In 1926 he was tonsured a monk and ordained a hierodeacon by Russian Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky), who gave him the name of John after his saintly relative, Saint John of Tobolsk.

Later that same year, he was ordained to the priesthood by Russian Bishop Gabriel (Chepur) of Chelyabinsk. Once ordained St. John would no longer sleep in a bed. He would nap in a chair or kneeling down in front of the icons, praying. He ate only once a day. For several years he worked as an instructor and tutor in Yugoslavia. He worked as a religious teacher in the Gymnasium of Velika Kikinda between 1925 and 1927.[3] In 1929, the Holy Synod of the Serbian Orthodox Church appointed him a teacher of the seminary in Bitola under principal Nikolaj Velimirović.[4] John earned the respect and devotion at the seminary where he taught. His reputation grew as he started visiting hospitals, caring for patients with prayer and communion.

In 1934 he was ordained a bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia by Metropolitan Anthony and assigned to the diocese of Shanghai.[5][4] In Shanghai, bishop John found an uncompleted cathedral and an Orthodox community deeply divided along ethnic lines. Making contact with all the various groups, he quickly became involved in local charitable institutions and also founded an orphanage and home for the children of the destitute.

He set about restoring church unity, establishing ties with local Orthodox Serbs and Greeks. Here he first became known for miracles attributed to his prayer.

As a public figure, it was impossible for him to completely conceal his ascetic way of life. During the Japanese occupation, even when he routinely ignored the curfew in pursuit of his pastoral activities, the Japanese authorities never harassed him.

As the only Russian hierarch in China who refused to submit to the authority of the Soviet-dominated Russian Orthodox Church under Patriarch Alexy I of Moscow, he was elevated in 1946 to Archbishop of China by the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia.[2]

When the Communists took power in China in 1949, the Russian colony was forced to flee, first to a refugee camp on the island of Tubabao in the Philippines and then mainly to the United States and Australia. Archbishop St. John personally traveled to Washington, D.C., to ensure that his people would be allowed to enter the US.

In 1951, St. John was assigned to the Archdiocese of Western Europe with his see first in Paris, then in Brussels.

Thanks to his work in compiling the lives of saints, numerous pre-Schism Western saints became known in Orthodoxy and continue to be venerated to this day. His charitable and pastoral work continued as it had in Shanghai, even among a much more widely scattered flock.

In 1962 St. John was reassigned by the Holy Synod to the see of San Francisco. Here too, he found a divided community and a cathedral in an unfinished state. Although he completed the building of the Holy Virgin Cathedral and brought some measure of peace to the community, he became the target of slander from political enemies. They filed a lawsuit against him for alleged mishandling of finances related to the construction of the cathedral. He was exonerated, but this was a great cause of sorrow to him in his later life.

Deeply reverent of St. John of Kronstadt, John played an active role in the preparation of his canonization in 1964.[6]

The Relics of St. John