NEW YORK: 17 November, 2025
Synodal Protodeacon Nicolas Mokhoff reposes in the Lord

On Sunday, November 16, 2025, Protodeacon Nicolas Mokhoff, a cleric of the Synodal Cathedral of Our Lady “of the Sign” in New York, passed away.

The future Fr Nicolas, a descendant of the Don Cossacks and a longtime cleric of the Cathedral, was born in Luxembourg. Displaced persons—and their descendants, accordingly—were not entitled to any European citizenship at all. Therefore, his first official citizenship became American, after his family moved to the United States in 1958.

Fr Nicolas' parents sang in the church choir all their lives – in Luxembourg, and later in New York.

His future wife Nadezhda was born in Germany. She became an American citizen in 1951. A historian and anthropologist by training, translator and editor, she worked since her university years on a popular UN project in the 1980s – teleconferences involving American and Soviet deputies, doctors, writers, and priests; she also worked as a manager on other joint cultural projects between the USA and Russia.

They met in New York when they were students at St Sergius High School at the Synod Residence in New York. The Synodal Cathedral is home to the Kursk-Root Icon of the Mother of God, and since 1959 it has been the parish of the Mokhoff family, where Nadezhda volunteered at the candle desk for more than 50 years, also serving in the sisterhood, and in many other ways at the church.

Fr Nicolas was ordained to the deaconate on April 7, 1974, by Metropolitan Philaret (Voznesensky; +1985). Since November 17, 1980, he has been a protodeacon.

The funeral service for Fr Nicolas will be held at the Synodal Cathedral on Saturday, November 22. The burial will take place afterwards at Novo-Diveevo Convent in Nanuet, NY.