All Saints' male metochion

A chapel and church in honour of All Saints in Luhansk were built on the grave of a locally venerated ascetic - deacon Philip Gorbenko (1858-1956) - approximately not earlier than 2001; a male metochion of the Ascension monastery of the Luhansk eparchy later arose on the site^{1, 2}.

Deacon Philip Yelyseiovych Gorbenko was born on 22 November 1858 into a peasant family in the Chernihiv region³. At the end of the nineteenth century he moved to Luhansk, settled near a cloth factory on the bank of the Luhan River, and worked as a watchman at the gatehouse of a cast-iron foundry³.

On the night of 13 June 1905 (New Style), while on night watch, Philip caught out four workers who were trying to steal a cart of timber intended for the construction of gunpowder magazines; according to tradition, a vision of the Mother of God saved him from the attack they had planned^{3, 4}. Soon afterward he made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and other holy places of Palestine³.

A depiction of the vision, kept in the deacon's cell, was painted by an unknown artist, but it was lost after the elder's death³. In memory of the same event, in 1992, by the blessing of Archbishop Ioannikii of Luhansk and Starobilsk, a monk-iconographer of the Pskov Caves Monastery painted a new icon, later known as the Luhansk icon of the Mother of God³.

Immediately after the war ended, Bishop Nykon of Donetsk and Voroshylovhrad ordained Philip to the diaconate at the Saint Nicholas cathedral in Luhansk, then still Voroshylovhrad³. Father Philip died on 22 November 1956 - 98 years to the day after his birth - and was buried at a cemetery near the bus station³.

As of the end of 2012, the church at this metochion was listed as under construction, by the city cemetery⁵. On 30 June 2013 a patronal feast was celebrated there, with the Liturgy led by the abbot of the Ascension monastery⁶.