Convent of Saint John in St.Petersburg

Stavropegial Convent of St. John was founded by John of Kronshtadt in 1900. The convent is located on the bank of the river Karpovka near Petrograd Metro Sta-tion. The name of stavropegial means that the convent is directly subjected to the Patriarch.

The convent is one of the most famous pilgrimage places not only in Petersburg, considering the scale of John of Kronshtadt personality, but the entire Russia. John of Kronshtadt is the saint patron of St. Petersburg, along with Alexander Nevsky and Xenia the Blessed.

John of Kronshtadt was born in the village Sura of Arkhangelsk Province in 1829. Eventually, he got a very famous preacher. Many people couldn`t listen to his sermons without tears, and in the ecclesiastical tradition he is called the «great prayer, seer and miracle-maker». It was just him who received the last confessions of emperors Alexander II and Alexander III.

The convent was founded as the place where the nuns of the woman commune of St. John the Theologian from his native village of Sura could stay.

The main temple of the convent was built in the Byzantine style so it has five domes. On the western side of the church a five-tier bell-tower was erected. In 1901 on the ground floor of the unfinished temple the Church of St. John of Rila was consecrated who was the patron of John of Kronshtadt, and during 1903-1908 a small burial church devoted to Elijah the Prophet and the Queen Theodora (the parents of St. John of Kronshtadt had the same names) was built in the basement floor of the temple.

John of Kronshtadt died on December 20, 1908. And on the following day the main temple of St. John`s Convent was consecrated, and a day later John of Kronshtadt was buried in the Church of Elijah and Theodora. John of Kronshtadt was sanctified by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1990.