Protection of the Mother of God Monastery

The monastery grew up around the church of the Protection, built in the 1920s by the protopriest Vsevolod Kolomatsky, later Archimandrite Andrii (1896-1980), a noted Transcarpathian pastor, architect and icon-painter¹. The eparchy kept the church's centenary in 2023, so the building is dated to 1923⁵. In 1927 the wife and daughter of Fr Vsevolod were buried in the crypt beneath the church¹.

In the 1970s the services in the church were stopped: the building was used as a storehouse and then as a museum of atheism¹. In the 1990s the church fell badly into decay, and in 2000-2001 the arranging of a monastery began¹. On 23 April 2002 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church confirmed the opening of the house¹. By the labour of the brethren and of benefactors the church was renewed and blocks and a belfry were raised¹.

Among the holy objects of the monastery are an icon of the Mother of God "of the Sign", painted by Fr Vsevolod Kolomatsky in the 1920s, and a copy of the Iveron icon of the Mother of God, handed in 1994 to the future superior of the house by the schema-nun Makryna (Matsko) of the Mukachevo convent². Here too are kept the icon "Jesus Christ, the Sun of Righteousness", brought from Odesa and given in 1998, and a nineteenth-century icon of the Great Martyr Panteleimon with a portion of his relics, painted at the Athonite monastery of St Panteleimon and passed to the monastery in 2005 by Ahapit (Bevtsyk), bishop of Mukachevo².

The patronal feasts of the house are the Protection of the Mother of God on 1 (14) October, the feast of the Iveron icon on the Tuesday of Bright Week, and the memory of the Great Martyr and healer Panteleimon on 27 July (9 August)³; the Mukachevo eparchy keeps the monastery on its list of houses⁴. Life here does not stop: on 2 December 2022 two novices were tonsured into monasticism in the house - a graduate of the Pochaiv theological seminary and a graduate of the Poltava missionary seminary⁶; in December 2024 the monastery took part in the eparchy's "St Nicholas marathon", visiting a boarding school and a shelter for the elderly⁸; and on 9 August 2026 the ruling bishop led the consecration of a new church in honour of the Great Martyr Panteleimon, built at the monastery⁷.