Transfiguration Cathedral (Odesa)

The Transfiguration Cathedral stands in the very centre of Odesa, on Cathedral Square; every page of its own site is signed as the site of the cathedral of the Odesa eparchy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church¹. The church was laid down in 1795 in honour of St Nicholas, and consecrated in 1808 in honour of the Transfiguration of the Lord instead¹. It became a cathedral in 1837, when a newly established diocesan see settled in Odesa and a stone bell tower had just been finished beside it¹.

In 1932 the cathedral was closed, and four years later blown up; a fountain was later placed where the altar had stood, and it remained there until the rebuilding¹. The church was recreated between 1999 and 2005: twenty-three bells were brought from Greece, while the main one, of fourteen tonnes, was cast from copper collected by the people of Odesa themselves and raised into the bell tower in 2008¹. The lower church was consecrated in 2005 in honour of St Innocent of Kherson¹.

On the night of 23 July 2023 the cathedral was seriously damaged by a missile strike - so the cathedral's restoration fund, created with the blessing of the ruling bishop, describes that night². The missile hit the side altar consecrated in honour of St Peter, where the Kasperivka icon of the Mother of God stood, and pierced the ceiling; part of the roof came down, the foundation and the central piles were damaged, doors and windows were blown out, and a fire added to the loss². Within hours of the strike, rescuers, the clergy of Odesa and the people of the city themselves set about clearing the rubble and saving everything that had survived². The cathedral is being rebuilt on donations the fund gathers from all over the world².

The cathedral opened its own video channel on 27 January 2023, and it already holds more than two thousand recordings³. Its backbone is live broadcasts of services from the cathedral itself: morning Liturgies and evening services, thickest on Saturdays, Sundays and feast days³. Between the broadcasts come short videos for a saint's day or a feast, notices of the services ahead and invitations to the patronal feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord³. The community celebrated the Paschal service of 2026 in the cathedral itself, and the channel called it the first Pascha after the destruction³.