Protection of the Mother of God and Balta St. Theodosius Monastery

The Protection of the Mother of God and Balta St. Theodosius Monastery stands in the town of Balta in the Odesa region, and what began it was not a monastic house but a shelter: at his own home in Balta the priest Theodosius Levytsky kept an almshouse for the poor¹. After his death in 1846 a church in honour of the Protection of the Mother of God was raised on the site of that house, and in 1907 a men's monastery was established in Balta^{1, 2}.

Theodosius Levytsky, the son of a priest, was born on 11 January 1791. Having completed the course of the Podillia Theological Seminary, in 1815 he was ordained priest of the St. Nicholas church of Balta³. In 1818 he was widowed, losing his wife and his newborn son at the same time, and after the death of his parents he gave himself wholly to the service of God³. In 1823, having presented to Emperor Alexander the Blessed his composition on the Last Judgment, he was summoned by the sovereign to Petersburg, and the emperor appointed him his own confessor³. The following year, as the monastery writes, through the envy and slander of enemies at court Father Theodosius was imprisoned in the Konevets Monastery, where he spent three years in confinement; released in 1828, he returned to Balta³. He died on 22 March 1846³.

To set the house up, in 1907 the hieromonk Varlaam, in the world Petro Karpovych Kozulia, was sent to Balta by the Podillia diocesan authority, and from 30 June of that year he governed the monastery as its superior⁴. He was born on 1 July 1871 into a peasant family of the village of Baibuzivka in Podillia, and took monastic tonsure on 29 July 1901 in the Hraniv Transfiguration Monastery⁴. By the monastery's own account, as early as 1908 the brethren had to withstand the sect of the Innokentievtsy⁴. The monastery's rector during Varlaam's governance was Bishop Amvrosii of Balta, in the world Vasyl Ivanovych Hudko, vicar of the Podillia diocese from 27 February 1909, who often came to the house, served in it and stayed there⁴. In its flourishing the monastery numbered more than 100 monks, and had a farmyard, vineyards and a large auxiliary holding with land^{1, 2}.

Both of them perished under Soviet rule. Bishop Amvrosii was shot on 9 August 1918, and in 2000 he was numbered among the saints⁴. Archimandrite Varlaam was transferred in 1923 as rector to the Bershad Transfiguration Monastery, was secretly consecrated bishop of Bershad and vicar of the Kyiv diocese in August 1926, was exiled to the Karaganda region on 17 July 1931, and was shot near Orenburg on 10 October 1937; his place of burial is unknown⁴.

The house itself was closed in 1923 by order of the Soviet authorities: the church was plundered, and the brethren were dispersed in a single night and carried off in an unknown direction¹. In 1942, thanks to the Romanian Spiritual Mission, the monastery was opened again, but the residential buildings and the farmyard passed into the possession of a military hospital¹. In 1961 the house was closed a second time, and a sports school was installed in the church¹.

The founder's relics outlived both closures. In 1909, with the permission of the Most Holy Synod, his remains were moved from the cemetery to the crypt of the monastery's Trinity church, and after the closure of the house in 1923 they were returned to the cemetery⁵. In 1997 they were uncovered a second time and laid in a shrine in the Dormition Cathedral of Balta⁵. On 18 April 2008 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, having examined the life, labours, ascetic deeds, miracles and popular veneration of the priest Theodosius Levytsky, blessed his local glorification and ruled that his remains be held to be holy relics (Journal No. 29)⁶.

The opening of the monastery was blessed by the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church on 24 January 2007 by Journal No. 7, upon the report of Metropolitan Ahafanhel of Odesa and Izmail⁷. The buildings, however, were not returned at once: the court process dragged on for three years, and only in November 2010 was the monastery handed over to the Odesa diocese^{1, 2}.

On 20 December 2012 the Holy Synod separated out of the Odesa diocese a distinct Balta diocese, forming it within the administrative bounds of fourteen districts of the Odesa region (Journal No. 103)⁸. Balta became an episcopal see, and the Protection monastery became the residence of the ruling bishop¹. On 19 June 2014 the Synod changed the name of the house and introduced amendments and additions to its statute in connection with the formation of the Balta diocese (Journal No. 9)⁹.

On 20 October 2012 the relics of the holy and righteous Theodosius Levytsky were solemnly translated from the Dormition Cathedral of Balta to the Protection monastery^{1, 2}, and in 2013 the principal church of the house, in honour of the Protection of the Most Holy Mother of God, was consecrated². On 3 June 2015 seven domes with their crosses, intended for the Protection and Trinity churches of the house, were consecrated at the monastery¹⁰, and in the same year, in time for the patronal feast, those churches were crowned with seven new domes with gilded cupolas¹¹.

In August 2015 a skete of the Protection and Balta St. Theodosius Monastery was opened at the church in honour of the Kazan icon of the Mother of God in the village of Pasytseli in the Balta district¹². On 4 November of that year, on the day of the celebration of the Kazan icon, the skete kept its patronal feast for the first time¹³, and in February 2016 a capital repair was under way in the skete's Kazan church, carried out by the brethren of the monastery¹⁴.

On 22 November 2015, in the course of an archpastoral visit to the Balta diocese, the house was visited by the Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church: he venerated the relics of the monastery's founder and inspected the progress of the repair and restoration work^{2, 15}. The pilgrimage department of the Balta diocese operates at the monastery¹⁶.

On 17 August 2021 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church blessed the local glorification among the saints of the Venerable Confessor Anthony of Balta (Nozdrin) within the bounds of the Balta diocese^{17, 18}. The rite of glorification itself was performed on 1 October 2022 in the Protection and Balta St. Theodosius Monastery: during the festal Divine Liturgy the decision of the Synod establishing the veneration of the saint was read out together with the life of the Venerable Confessor, the troparion, kontakion and magnification were sung to him, and his relics and icon were venerated¹⁹.