Pototsky Sts. Antony and Theodosius's Monastery

Pototsky Sts. Antony and Theodosius's Monastery stands beside the village of Dmytrivka in the Kremenchuk district of the Poltava region, on the bank of the Psel, and is dedicated to Saints Antony and Theodosius of the Caves².

The house owes its name to neighbouring Potoky, a village on the right bank of the Psel opposite Dmytrivka, which itself took its name from the Pototsky magnates who owned these lands in the seventeenth century¹. By the monastery's own account Dmytrivka was founded in the sixteenth century and Potoky in the first half of the seventeenth¹.

Monastic life in this locality is older than the house itself. At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries a skete of the Kozelshchyna convent stood here, with a church of the icon of the Mother of God "Joy of All Who Sorrow", and the present house calls that skete its spiritual predecessor^{1, 3}.

When the Kozelshchyna monastery was closed in 1929, monastic life continued at the skete for another three years^{1, 4}. The sisters secretly carried the wonderworking Kozelshchyna icon of the Mother of God there, and it remained at the skete throughout those years^{1, 5}.

The sources call the skete Obitok, and each of them ties it to this locality in its own way. The Kozelshchyna house places the skete in the village of Obitok near Kremenchuk⁴, a Kyiv parish publication beside the settlement of Potoky⁶, and the Kremenchuk eparchy writes that about fifty sisters moved to the river Psel and founded the skete there⁷.

The skete's spiritual father was Archimandrite Alexander (Petrovsky), the future Archbishop of Kharkiv and a hieromartyr, who died in prison in 1940^{1, 3, 7}. Sheltering there with the sisters was the Kozelshchyna abbess, the venerable martyr Olympiada II (Verbetska), who had managed beforehand to save the wonderworking image and take it out of the closed monastery⁸.

In 1932 the skete - by then the last monastic refuge in the district - was closed^{7, 8}. In the same year Archimandrite Alexander was consecrated bishop⁷.

The present house began in 1999, when a skete of the Mhar Transfiguration monastery in honour of Saints Antony and Theodosius of the Caves was founded near Dmytrivka on the bank of the Psel^{1, 2}.

The opening of the Pototsky Sts. Antony and Theodosius's Monastery in the village of Dmytrivka, Kremenchuk district, Poltava region, was blessed by the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church by journal No. 18 of 16 October 2003; the skete thus became an independent monastery^{1, 2}.

Four years later the church geography of the region changed. On 14 November 2007 the Holy Synod divided the Poltava eparchy into two independent ones, formed the Kremenchuk eparchy and assigned to it the Kremenchuk district, in which the house stands⁹.

The Synod completed the legal side of that change on 4 April 2017 by journal No. 07: it blessed amendments and additions to the house's statute, the change of its name from "Pototsky Sts. Antony and Theodosius's Monastery of the Poltava eparchy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church" to "Pototsky Sts. Antony and Theodosius's Monastery of the Kremenchuk eparchy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church", and the registration of the statute in its new redaction¹⁰.

The monastery church was laid in 2014 on the feast of the icon of the Mother of God "She Who Is Quick to Hear", and on that day the house keeps its patronal celebration¹¹.

On 11 October 2023, on the day of the Synaxis of the Venerable Fathers of the Kyiv Caves who rest in the Near Caves, the ruling bishop of the eparchy led the Divine Liturgy at the house, and the faithful and the clergy walked in a cross procession around the monastery¹².

The house was opened above all for a missionary purpose^{1, 2}. Every summer an Orthodox holiday camp operates there, attended by parishioners of the churches of the Kremenchuk deanery, pupils of Sunday schools, children from large families and orphans; they live at the monastery and take part in its services, talks and thematic lectures are held for the adults, and the Sunday-school teachers who accompany the children work with them^{1, 2}.

The monastery receives pilgrims and has room to lodge them overnight, and services are held on Sundays and feast days².