Hierarch Saint John (Maximovitch), Archbishop of Shanghai and San Francisco

Saint John (born Michael Maximovitch) was Archbishop of Shanghai, later of Western Europe, and finally of San Francisco. Born June 4, 1896, in Adamovka, Kharkov Governorate, into a noble family related to St. John of Tobolsk, he was tonsured a monk in Serbia in 1926.

Consecrated Bishop of Shanghai in 1934, he cared for the vast Russian émigré community, founding orphanages, hospitals, and schools. When communists took control of China in 1949, he led roughly 5,000 refugees to Tubabao Island in the Philippines and secured their resettlement in the United States. He served in Western Europe from 1951, then as Archbishop of San Francisco from 1962, completing the new cathedral.

He was renowned for extreme asceticism, clairvoyance, and numerous reported healings. He reposed on July 2, 1966, in Seattle. He was glorified by ROCOR on July 2, 1994, in San Francisco, and received into the general church calendar by the Moscow Patriarchate's Bishops' Council in 2008. His relics rest openly in San Francisco's cathedral.