St. George's Monastery

St. George's Monastery, a house of monks, stands in the village of Zabolotne in the Irshavsk district of the Zakarpattya region and belongs to the Mukachevo Diocese of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church^{1, 2}. The house has a church in honour of the holy Great Martyr George the Victorious³.

The house is young. Its own website dates the foundation of the monastery to 2006³. The opening of St. George's Monastery in the village of Zabolotne, Irshavsk district, Zakarpattya region, was blessed by the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church at its session of 28 May 2010, by Journal No. 28¹.

It arose during the church revival in the Irshava area: in an interview published by the Mukachevo Diocese in 2020, the Zabolotne monastery is named among six houses of that area which were opened, or built on new sites, in those years⁴.

The monastery's church was raised in stages. On 23 September 2016, after a hierarchical service, the cross over the cupola was consecrated on a church in which building work was then still being finished⁶, and on 25 September 2020 a new altar and the church itself were consecrated here⁸.

A separate structure of the house is the chapel in honour of the icon of the Most Holy Mother of God "Joy of All Who Sorrow". On 19 October 2019 this chapel was consecrated at the monastery together with a spring, and from that day the ground on which it stands has been called the hermitage of the same icon¹³.

On 31 October 2021, after the Divine Liturgy, a chapel of the same dedication was consecrated at the house^{14, 15}. The diocese reported the two consecrations as separate events and nowhere explained whether two stages of one shrine are meant^{13, 14}.

One of the monastery's holy things is the Boianska icon of the Most Holy Mother of God, which a diocesan report of 2022 calls the local shrine of the house⁹. The prayerful veneration of this image at Zabolotne is attested by diocesan reports of 2014, 2016, 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025^{5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12}.

Tonsures at the house are attested from 2015: on 21 August of that year the bishop tonsured three novices here, and one of them was given the name of George, in honour of the patron of the house¹⁶; a resident tonsured into the mantle on 22 August 2022 was ordained hierodeacon in the same monastery the following month^{17, 9}.

A diocesan report of January 2016 calls it a good tradition of the house that the brethren travel with carols on the first day of the Nativity of Christ to the oncohaematology ward of the Regional Children's Hospital in Mukachevo¹⁸.

The house has also received guests from the region's social institutions: in August 2019 the children of the Irshava children's psychoneurological boarding school prayed here at the Divine Liturgy and sang at the service¹⁹, and at the beginning of November of the same year the participants of the Promin Nadii charity camp for children and young people with special needs prayed, confessed and received communion at the monastery²⁰.

On 23 November 2024 a resident of the house, Schemamonk Onufrii (Buchelo), who departed to the Lord in his 96th year, was given the funeral rite and buried at the monastery; the diocese called him its oldest cleric²¹.