St. John the Theologian's Convent

St. John the Theologian's Convent of the Khust eparchy stands in the village of Kopashnovo-Polyana in Zakarpattya²; the house began in the hamlet of Polyana near the village of Kopashnovo, now in Khust District of the Zakarpattya region¹.

It was begun by the local parish priest Heorhii (Yurii) Keniz⁴. On 14 February 1936 he petitioned the church authorities, writing that a grave illness kept him from serving any longer as the village priest and that he wished to found a women's skete on his own plot of land eight kilometres from the village, in the forest by Mount Kuzia, where there was a place fit for a monastery with clean air and where he could still celebrate the services³.

He was born in 1884, when Zakarpattya belonged to Austria-Hungary; during the First World War he was mobilised to the front and taken prisoner in Russia, where he came to know Orthodox worship and resolved to leave the Union, and on returning to his native village he worked as a missionary for the Orthodox movement and from 1922 to 1938 served there as a priest⁴.

The circumstances of his ordination remain disputed: the authors of the book about the monastery write that Heorhii Keniz received the priesthood in 1922 from Archbishop Savvatii of Prague, while the reviewer contests this, pointing out that Savvatii was made an archbishop in Constantinople only on 4 March 1923 and that in fact he was ordained by Bishop Serhii (Korolov)⁴.

The skete was founded in 1936 with the permission of the Prague archdiocese, on a plot of land belonging to I. Pop⁴; that same year a chapel was raised and the building of a residential block begun¹. The chapel was consecrated on Palm Sunday by Father Heorhii and Hieromonk Serhii (Marushka), who also celebrated the first Divine Liturgy beneath it; in the summer Father Heorhii began building a cell block, and a year later he died³.

The first sisters of the newly founded house were the nuns Magdalyna (Shelemba), Matrona (Levko) and Melaniia (Popadynets)⁴; at first three nuns lived here, and the first superior was the nun Magdalyna, who headed the skete from 1936 to 1948¹.

The skete was under the jurisdiction of Savvatii (Vrabets), Archbishop of Prague and all Czecho-Slovakia, and in 1946 it passed to Nestor (Sydoruk), Bishop of Mukachevo-Uzhhorod¹.

Between 1940 and 1952 the monastery church and a second house for the sisters were built¹, and in 1952 a new church was consecrated in the house³. In the Soviet period up to twenty sisters lived in the skete⁴.

In 1948 the nun Magdalyna left the office at her own wish, and the sisters elected as their new superior Hegumenia Yevheniia (Farkavets), who led the skete until its closure^{4, 1}. As the researcher notes, Magdalyna was the only Orthodox nun repressed in the Soviet period: on 17 July 1952 a military tribunal of the border troops of the Zakarpattya district sentenced her on false charges to ten years in corrective labour camps with five years' loss of rights and confiscation of property; she was released in 1955 and rehabilitated in 1992⁴.

The house was closed at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s, though the church of the Holy Apostle John the Theologian remained in use³. The published dates of the liquidation differ: the Encyclopedia of Modern Ukraine gives 1958¹, the same researcher's essay of 2009 gives 1959⁵, and his own review of 2008 names a resolution of 1960 instructing the authorities to liquidate the women's skete here⁴.

The nuns were moved to other houses in Zakarpattya - to Lypcha in Khust District and Chumalevo in Tiachiv District^{1, 5}; Hegumenia Yevheniia went with all the nuns to the Chumalevo monastery, where she was superior⁴. The sources differ on what became of the buildings: the encyclopedia writes that the premises were handed to the local school¹, while the review of 2008 says the buildings were put on the village council's balance sheet⁴.

In 1992 the house was restored: it was revived through the efforts of nuns headed by Hegumenia Liubov (Kryvanych), of the village community and of many benefactors^{1, 4}. Under her leadership the building of a residential block and of a summer chapel in honour of All the Saints of Rus was begun¹; the parishioners raised a new sisters' block, and in 1995 the chapel was finished³.

On 29 July 1994 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, by journal No. 15, created the Khust eparchy, separating it from the Mukachevo eparchy and including six raions in the new eparchy, Khust among them⁶.

Later a second cell block appeared with a house church in honour of the Presentation of the Theotokos in the Temple³; the encyclopedia adds that this church was arranged on the second floor of a building raised for the superior and the clergy¹. In the first sixteen years of the restored house there were built the church of the Holy Apostle John the Theologian, two residential buildings, a chapel and farm buildings⁴.

The number of sisters grew: in 1993 nine nuns lived in the house¹, in 2008 fifteen⁴, and by the time the encyclopaedia article appeared in 2014 eighteen¹.

Schema-Hegumenia Liubov (Kryvanych), who had headed the community since 1992, was born on 18 March 1931 and departed to the Lord on 10 June 2020, in her 90th year².

Among the house's shrines are an icon of the Holy Apostle John the Theologian from the island of Patmos, an icon of St Nicholas of Myra, and particles of the relics of the Holy Prophet John the Forerunner, of the Holy Great Martyr Demetrius of Thessaloniki and of the seven Youths of Ephesus⁷. The Encyclopedia of Modern Ukraine calls the icon of St Nicholas wonder-working¹.

The house's own site names two of its feasts - the Presentation of the Theotokos in the Temple and the commemoration of the Apostle John the Theologian⁸. On those days the ruling bishop of the Khust eparchy has repeatedly led the services at the monastery: on 21 May 2019⁹, 9 October 2019¹⁰, 4 December 2022¹¹ and 21 May 2025¹².

On 26 August 2025 the rite of tonsure into the Great Schema was performed in the house: the nun Anastasiia received the new name Nina, becoming Schema-nun Nina, and the rite was led by Archimandrite Isakii¹³.