St. Panteleimon's Convent

St. Panteleimon's Convent stands in the village of Osiy-Kamyanka in the Irshava district of the Zakarpattia region and belongs to the Mukachevo Diocese of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church^{1, 5}. The house is young: its beginning falls in 2000, and it became a monastery in 2005^{1, 2}.

It was founded by archpriest Heorhiy Petrovtsiy, who until then had been living in retirement in the village^{2, 4}. According to an account recorded at the convent in 2014, at Pascha he dreamed of a mountain and heard the voice of the Mother of God - "Build a monastery on this place"⁴. Two weeks later the dream returned, and the third time the priest took it as a command of God and spent about a month searching for the place he had seen, going round his village from one side to another, until he came to the tract of Kamyanka and recognised it⁴.

On that spot a marble cross was set up first, and the building of a church began: a temporary one at first, and the present one later⁴. The first Divine Liturgy was served here on 9 August 2000, and Liturgies then began to be celebrated every Sunday^{4, 13}. In the first years of the house a wooden chapel was built in it².

In 2003 the building of a large stone church in honour of the great martyr and healer Panteleimon was begun^{2, 4}. Father Heorhiy, as they recount at the convent, used to repeat: "I shall not live to see a monastery here, but there will be a monastery here"⁴. He built for three years and died suddenly on 3 October 2004; he was buried beside St. Michael's church in the village⁴.

The opening of St. Panteleimon's men's monastery in the village of Osiy-Kamyanka, Irshava district, Zakarpattia region, was blessed by the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church at its session of 26 July 2005, by journal No. 14, having heard the report of Ahapit, Bishop of Mukachevo and Uzhhorod¹. At first the brethren lived in site cabins, because there were no buildings on the place yet⁴.

In November 2011, by the blessing and decision of the ruling hierarch of the Mukachevo Diocese, the monastery became a convent⁴. On 10 November 2011 two sisters were sent to the house from the Dormition Convent of the village of Domboky in the Mukachevo district, and on 15 August 2012 the first monastic tonsure in the life of the house took place here⁴.

According to a description of 2014, four sisters lived in the house - three nuns and one novice; the sisters baked prosphora and bread, made candles and worked the garden, on Sundays a choir gathered from the convent's parishioners sang, and people came to the services from Irshava and the village of Ilnytsia⁴.

From 2011 the spiritual father of the house was archimandrite Mark (Kyukalo)^{10, 12}. He was born on 10 March 1935 in the village of Kushnytsia in the same Irshava district, after school went as a novice to the Holy Trinity men's monastery of Horodylovo near Khust and returned there after his conscript service; but the anti-religious campaign of the late 1950s liquidated almost all the sketes and monasteries of the region, the Horodylovo house among them¹⁰.

He received priestly ordination in 1970, served in parishes of the Poltava region, and from 1973 in Zakarpattia; from 1990 he carried the obedience of a spiritual father in the convents of the diocese¹⁰. He was tonsured with the name Mark in Great Lent of 2011 and in that same year became the spiritual father of St. Panteleimon's Convent¹⁰. In the diocese he was called a well-known missionary and a builder and restorer of several houses¹².

Archimandrite Mark died on 16 October 2023 in his 88th year; on 18 October the rite of burial at St. Panteleimon's Convent was led by the administrator of the Mukachevo Diocese^{10, 11}.

Among the shrines of the house are particles of the relics of the great martyr Panteleimon and of other saints³. For the patronal feast of 2016 hundreds of the faithful and more than 30 clergy gathered at the monastery from the parishes of the Mukachevo Diocese⁷.

On 9 August 2017 the administrator of the Mukachevo Diocese consecrated at the house a new church and altar in honour of the icon of the Mother of God "It Is Truly Meet", and after the Liturgy a cross procession with the appointed reading of the Gospel was made around the convent's central church in honour of the great martyr Panteleimon⁵. A year later, on 9 August 2018, a new altar and the renewed church were consecrated in the main church of the house, and after the Liturgy a worship cross was blessed⁶.

The change of the house's status was confirmed canonically later: on 3 April 2019 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, having considered the report of the administrator of the Mukachevo Diocese, reorganised St. Panteleimon's men's monastery into a convent - journal No. 4⁸. The Chancellor of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church cited this act in the annual report for 2019 as one of the two reorganisations of monastic houses of that year⁹.

In 2025 a monograph on the origin and activity of the house was published¹³. Its author is the local historian Volodymyr Roman, a research fellow of the Theological and Historical Research Centre named after archimandrite Vasylii (Pronin); the book of 152 pages was issued by an Uzhhorod publishing house, and it is dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the first Liturgy on the site of the monastery and to the 20th anniversary of its opening¹³.