Righteous Holy Righteous John of Kronstadt

Holy Righteous John of Kronstadt (born Ivan Ilyich Sergiev) was one of the most venerated pastors of the 19th–20th century Russian Church. Born October 19, 1829, in the village of Sura, Arkhangelsk Province, into a poor family of a hereditary psalm-reader, he graduated from the St. Petersburg Theological Academy and in 1855 was ordained priest at St. Andrew's Cathedral in Kronstadt, where he served for over 50 years.

He became renowned for celebrating the Liturgy daily, for fervent preaching calling all to repentance and communal confession, for vast charitable work (he founded the House of Industriousness in Kronstadt), and for numerous reports of healing through his prayers, attested even by non-Orthodox witnesses. He kept an extensive spiritual diary, "My Life in Christ."

He reposed on December 20, 1908, having foretold the day of his death, and was buried at the St. John Convent on the Karpovka River in St. Petersburg, which he himself founded. He was glorified by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia in 1964, and by the Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church on June 8, 1990.