Protection of the Mother of God female skete

The Protection of the Mother of God female skete stands in the village of Plishyvets, Hadiach district, Poltava region, and is a skete of Mgar Transfiguration Monastery; after that monastery's name the skete is also called the Mgar Skete^{1, 3, 4}.

The church around which the skete later formed was built on the initiative of Archbishop Parfeniy (Levytskyi) - a native of this very village, who, serving mostly in dioceses in Russia, kept up ties with his fellow countrymen⁶.

One of these countrymen was the historian Dmytro Yavornytskyi: it was in his collection that the bishop saw a photograph of the church in Novomoskovsk and conceived the idea of building a similar church in his native village. The project, designed by the Moscow architect Ivan Kuznetsov, was not a blind repetition of the Novomoskovsk model⁶.

The nine-domed Church of the Protection, 45 metres high, is cross-shaped. Its gilded six-tier iconostasis, made in a Moscow icon-painting workshop, about 10 metres high, was lost in Soviet times; the bell tower was blown up in 1934, but the church itself survived even after being hit by 7 shells during the war⁶.

On 5 October 2022 two tonsures were performed at the community: Inokinia Pulcheria (Kupchenko) to the mantle, and nun Viveya (Ravliuk) to the great schema, both keeping their monastic names^{2, 3}.

On 27 November 2022 a newly built residential building for the sisters of the community was consecrated at the skete¹.

On 14 October 2024, on the patronal feast of the Protection of the Most Holy Mother of God, the Divine Liturgy at the Church of the Protection was celebrated by archpriest Borys Kondrat and archpriest Roman Vysochanskyi⁴.

Today the church regularly holds the services of the Hadiach deanery: Sunday and feast-day Liturgy at 8:30, vigil the evening before at 15:00, and on weekdays the monastic rule is observed in the church⁵.