JERUSALEM: 10 April, 2024
Ascension of the Savior Convent on the Mount of Olives prayerfully celebrates the 130th anniversary of the repose of Archimandrite Antonin (Kapustin)

On Saturday, April 6, 2024, the eve of the feast of the Annunciation of the Most Holy Mother of God, after Liturgy, a pannikhida was served at the grave of Archimandrite Antonin (Kapustin) in the Church of the Ascension of the Lord on the Mount of Olives on the occasion of the 130th anniversary of the repose of the "Great Gatherer" of Russian Palestine.

Fr Antonin served as Chief of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem from 1865 until his death in 1894. The name of Archimandrite Antonin has entered the gilded pages of the history of the Russian Church, science and culture. Fr Antonin is rightly called the founder of the Russian Orthodox Presence in the Holy Land.

The pannikhida was led by Archimandrite Roman (Krassovsky), Chief of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission (Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia), co-served by Hieromonk Gerasim (Kotovsky) and Hierodeacon Amphilochius (Mazur). Praying at the pannikhida were Abbess Varvara (Novikova) and the sisters of the Mount of Olives Convent. Also commemorated during the service were Fr Antonin's parents, Priest John and Maria Kapustin, as well as the ever-memorable reader, Major General of the Tsarist Army, Mikhail Andreevich Khripunov, President of the Orthodox Palestine Society, who reposed on the same day, April 6, 1983, at Gethsemane Convent of St Mary Magdalene, Equal-to-the-Apostles, where he was buried.

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