St. John the Forerunner's Convent

St. John the Forerunner's Convent stands in the Hora tract near the village of Dubrivka in the Irshava area of the Zakarpattia region³. It was founded by Hegumen Feodosii (Borshosh), Heorhii in the world, a native of Zakarpattia born in the village of Borzhavske, now Velyka Chynhava in the Vynohradiv district^{1, 3}. When the Orthodox movement began in Zakarpattia, the young man met the Venerable Oleksii (Kabaliuk) in 1914 - canonised in 2001 as a locally venerated saint of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church - and moved from Greek Catholicism to Orthodoxy^{1, 3}. For that he was arrested by the Hungarian authorities in 1918 and imprisoned in the gaol at Sighet, but the court at Sevliush acquitted Borshosh and set him free^{1, 3}.

His monastic path began at St. Nicholas' monastery in the village of Iza, founded in 1920, and continued at the Transfiguration monastery for men in the village of Terebla, to which he was transferred with the blessing of the Venerable Oleksii^{1, 3}. In 1924, at the request of Hegumen Iov (Voityshyn), Bishop Veniamyn tonsured him into the mantia with the name Feodosii in the parish church of the village of Danylovo, and two days later ordained him hierodeacon^{1, 3}. On 12 April 1924 Archbishop Savvatii (Vrabets) ordained Feodosii hieromonk in Prague, after which he returned to the Terebla monastery, and from there Hegumen Iov sent him to parish service at Dubrivka^{1, 3}.

At Dubrivka Father Feodosii asked Archbishop Savvatii for permission to build a men's skete in honour of John the Forerunner, and received a written consent to build an Orthodox church in the Hora tract by the village and, beside it, a building intended for a monastery³. He found a convenient spot not far from the village, bought a small plot of land from a villager, Vasyl Bilon, and began building in September 1925^{1, 3}. In the spring of 1926 they set about firing bricks; there was no water nearby and it had to be carted in barrels for several kilometres, while the village lads who helped later became monks themselves - among them the future hieromonks Zosyma (Popovych) and Serafym (Brovdii)³. The foundation of the future church was consecrated, with Archbishop Savvatii's blessing, by Hieromonk Serhii (Marushka)³.

The church of the holy prophet John the Forerunner was finished in 1931, and in the same year, on 19 August, Archbishop Savvatii raised Father Feodosii to the rank of hegumen for his services in establishing and spreading Orthodoxy^{1, 3}. In 1940-1941 the church was painted by an artist named Hohol, from the village of Bilky in the Irshava area^{1, 3}. The eparchial account calls this house the first Orthodox monastery in the lands of the Irshava district³.

Besides their church service the monks of the skete worked the monastery land, which was their only means of subsistence³. On 8 September 1952 Ilarion, Bishop of Mukachevo and Uzhhorod, issued an order by which the St. John the Forerunner's skete was liquidated and attached to the parish church of the village of Dubrivka as a branch³. In time the church was turned into a collective-farm store³.

The revival began in the 1990s and was taken up by Archpriest Dymytrii Bulatko, who had been a novice of this same house before its closure and who died in 2006^{1, 3}. From 1996, at his request, the superior and sisters of St. Seraphim's convent in the village of Pryborzhavske served every Sunday in the surviving church^{1, 3}. By a letter of 21 November 1996, numbered 704, the Irshava district administration allowed the Pryborzhavske house to open a skete in the premises of the former monastery at Dubrivka³. In 1996-1999 a residential block was put up here¹. In 1999 Abbess Feodosiia (Marfynets) moved here for the revival of the monastery, together with eleven sisters^{1, 3}. By a decision of the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in 2000 the St. John the Forerunner's monastery for men was renamed a convent³.

For a long time the house had no bells: an initiative group of businessmen of the Irshava area, headed by Archimandrite Vissarion, bought more than ten bells for the newly built monasteries of the region out of their own money and from donations, cast at Novyi Rozdil in the Lviv region, and gave four of them to the Dubrivka monastery³. Gas was laid on at the monastery and a borehole 52 metres deep was drilled³. In 2001 an extension was made to the church of John the Forerunner, which had survived from the 1930s, and later two two-storey blocks, a belfry, a water-blessing chapel and a pilgrims' hostel were built^{1, 3}. Construction of the large summer church was begun in 2003 or in 2006, according to different accounts^{1, 3}. On 14 August 2010, in her 71st year, Abbess Feodosiia died³.

On 7 July 2011 Feodor, Archbishop of Mukachevo and Uzhhorod, consecrated a new church in honour of the Iveron icon of the Mother of God at the house and presented the monastery with a copy of that image, which the eparchial account calls wonderworking³. The copy was written on Mount Athos, and in 2005, while still an archimandrite, the future archbishop touched it there to the original and brought it to the Mukachevo monastery³. Since then the Iveron icon has been the convent's second patronal feast, beside the feasts of its heavenly patron, the Nativity and the Beheading of the prophet John the Forerunner^{2, 3}. Particles of the relics of St. John the Forerunner and of many other saints are kept at the house³. On 23 December 2014 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church blessed the adoption and registration of a new edition of the monastery's statute⁴. As of 2016 twelve sisters lived at the monastery³.