Iberian Icon of the Mother of God Monastery

The community stands on the south-western edge of Odesa, beside the "Shkilnyi" airfield. Once, out in the steppe here, there was a women's skete of St Michael, the circumstances of whose founding have not been kept in memory; at the end of the nineteenth century the skete was closed, and only the skete church remained in use, where the few inhabitants of the surrounding farmsteads would gather². In the first years of the twentieth century a society called the "Odesa Aeroclub" took shape in the city and was allotted a plot of land; a flying school later appeared here, and after it an airfield that was given the name "Shkilnyi"^{2, 4}. The aviators chose not to move the church that had come to them elsewhere, but kept it for their own spiritual needs; people called it Utochkin's church, after the Odesan Serhii Utochkin, who set speed records and took to the air in an aeroplane^{2, 4}. On one of his visits to Odesa the Emperor Nicholas II came to the flying school and, as tradition required, went into this church as well^{2, 4}. After 1917 the church did not survive: a militarised installation was set up on the site of the flying school².

The monastery was established in 1998 on the territory of a former military unit³. On 17 March 1998 a skete of the Odesa Dormition men's monastery was opened here, at Pascha on 19 April the first service was celebrated in the community, and on 19 May the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, by journal no. 26, blessed the opening of an independent Holy Iveron men's monastery in Odesa^{1, 3}. Before that a small brotherhood of four had prayed daily throughout Great Lent for help in founding the community: heavy ruin was all that the military unit had left behind².

Between 23 April and 23 October 1998 a bell tower was raised at the end of the main building of the former military unit³. On 23 October the first dome was lifted into place - the brethren together with the workmen numbered eleven at the time². On 26 October 1998, the day of the 350th anniversary of the bringing of the exact copy of the Iveron icon of the Mother of God to Moscow, a festal Divine Liturgy was celebrated in the community, led by Metropolitan Agathangel of Odesa and Izmail; on that day he consecrated the altar of the church of the Iveron icon of the Mother of God, set up on the second floor of the same building, and gave the monastery church plate and icons from his own collection^{2, 3}.

In early spring 1999 the monks set out for Athos to commission a copy of the Iveron icon of the Mother of God; at the end of that same spring a borehole was drilled in the monastery, and its water came to be known as the Iveron spring³. By the summer of 2000 a garden had been laid out in the centre of the community and a wooden chapel of St Nicholas of Myra set up in it, resting on four stones from the Holy Mountain³. On 26 July 2000 the copy of the Iveron icon brought from Athos took its place in the community^{3, 4}.

In 2003-2005 the church of St Seraphim of Sarov was built in the monastery; at the same period, besides the reconstruction of the older buildings, a cell block with the church of St Ignatius (Brianchaninov), a guesthouse and the superior's house appeared³. On 20 December 2012, by journal no. 98, the Holy Synod blessed the opening of this community's skete of the Forerunner in the village of Lozove, Rozdilna district, Odesa region⁵. On 9 April 2022 Metropolitan Agathangel of Odesa and Izmail performed the consecration of a church in the monastery⁶.

A Sunday school has worked at the community since 1998; there are icon-painting and sewing workshops, a church shop, and joinery and candle workshops^{4, 9}. The monastery's pilgrim guesthouse can take 100-200 people⁸. The men's choir of the community traces its history to 2004: at the services it sings the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra chant alone, it gives concert programmes in the Odesa Philharmonic and the opera house, and it has sung abroad⁷. The feast of the Iveron icon of the Mother of God is kept in the monastery on 25 February, 26 October and on the Tuesday of Bright Week⁴.