Sts. Constantine and Helen's Monastery

The monastery of the Holy Equals-to-the-Apostles Constantine and Helen stands in the village of Kostyantynivka in the Mykolaiv region. Its heart is a parish church of the same dedication: a large stone church was raised here in 1905 at the expense of the parishioners^{2, 3, 4}.

By the house's own account, this church took the place of a small church of the same name, built in 1862 with the participation of the Mykolaiv merchant Constantine Sobolev⁴.

The church came through the Soviet years in use. According to the eparchy's description and to the house's own account, only the bell tower over the entrance was dismantled from it^{2, 4}; according to an archived eparchial publication, the bell tower was damaged in the war years, the cross was taken off the dome in the years of atheist persecution, and the church itself long stood orphaned³.

Church life in it was revived through the petition and the care of the ruling bishop³. On 29 July 1998 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, having heard the report of Pitirim, Bishop of Mykolaiv and Voznesensk, blessed the opening of a monastery of this dedication in Kostyantynivka - by journal No. 40 of that session¹; the house came out of a parish².

It is the Synod act of 1998 that the house counts as the day of its birth, although the community received its state registration only on 30 April 2002³.

On 1 June 2008 an eparchial commission headed by the ruling bishop uncovered the relics of the Vasylivka new martyrs, and on 10 August of the same year the Primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Volodymyr of Kyiv and All Ukraine, performed their canonisation together with a council of hierarchs⁷.

One of the three new martyrs is the martyr Prokhor Bunchuk, church elder of the church of the Nativity of Christ in the village of Vasylivka near Snihurivka. Together with the rector of that church and its trustee he met a martyr's death on 26 April 1922, during the Bolshevik campaign for the confiscation of church valuables⁷.

By a decision of the eparchial council of 6 November 2008 this house was named as the place where the relics of the martyr Prokhor were to rest, and in 2009 the reliquary was brought here from the cathedral³; there they remain⁷.

An icon of the Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos in an old Italian manner is also kept in the church³.

Over the years of the revival, restoration work was carried out in the church: crosses were set on the dome, a votive cross was placed before the church building, the roof was recovered, the internal wiring was replaced and the windows were restored³. Repair and restoration work on the renewal of the church continued afterwards as well².

In 2015, when the house's main church turned 110 years old, the ruling bishop led the Divine Liturgy and a cross procession here, and the pupils of the Kostyantynivka school greeted those present with a performance⁵.

At that same time a block with a warm church was being built at the monastery⁴. On 14 April 2016 the ruling bishop celebrated the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts in the refectory church of the house, and after the service inspected the construction on the monastery grounds⁶; the eparchy's site also publishes a photograph of the refectory church dated 2016².