St. John the Forerunner's male community

St. John the Forerunner's male community is a monastic community of the Cherkasy Diocese of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in honour of the Forerunner and Baptist of the Lord John. It lives in the village of Stebliv in the Korsun-Shevchenkiv district of the Cherkasy region, at the Ascension church, which stands on the steep bank of the river Ros^{1, 2}.

Monks at this church are mentioned from at least October 2020. On 11 October of that year Archbishop Feodosiy of Cherkasy and Kaniv visited the Ascension parish, where he was met by the rector of the church, the parish clergy and the members of the male monastic community at the church; the bishop addressed a word of instruction to the monastic brethren and consecrated a new parish refectory^{2, 3}.

The Cherkasy Diocese wrote in January 2025 that the community had been founded in 2022 with the blessing of Metropolitan Feodosiy of Cherkasy and Kaniv⁴.

The church at which it lives has a pre-history of its own. On the high rock above the Ros, where the church now stands, another church stood a century and a half ago: in the nineteenth century the grandfather and the father of the writer Ivan Nechuy-Levytskyi served in it as priests, and his mother took the future prose writer there as a child to pray. That wooden church was burned in 1923⁵.

Its memory - in folk tradition and in museum exhibits - was preserved by the people of Stebliv and above all by the late director of the Ivan Nechuy-Levytskyi literary and memorial museum, Serhiy Khavrus⁵. When the foundation pit for the new church was dug in 2009, a metal capsule was found in the foundation of the burned church, and in it a letter written by the hand of the priests Semen and Stefan Levytskyi saying that that church had been laid in 1853; the capsule and the document were given to the museum⁵.

The new church was built over five years to a design by Metropolitan Sofroniy of Cherkasy and Kaniv: it has none of the corners usual in a building, and its walls pass smoothly into ovals and roundings⁵. It was raised by the efforts of Archpriest Mykolai Prykotenko, who had earlier built the Saviour's Transfiguration church in Stebliv, which became the foundation of the convent there^{5, 6}.

The first service in the newly built church took place on St Nicholas' day in 2014 and was led by the dean of the Korsun-Shevchenkiv district, Archpriest Ioann Nalapko⁵. On 17 May 2015 the prescribed rite of consecration of the church was performed by Metropolitan Sofroniy⁶.

The graves of the writer's grandfather and father remained at the church: they are tended and stand by the altar wall⁵. On 26 March 2021, after the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts in this church, Archbishop Feodosiy served a memorial service for the priestly family of Ivan Nechuy-Levytskyi, who was born in Stebliv in 1838⁷.

The community's church became the place of the Lenten common confessions of the Korsun-Shevchenkiv deanery: the clergy of the district confessed and communed together here on 26 March 2021⁸, on 1 April 2022⁹ and on 31 March 2023¹⁰. On 3 April 2024 the vicar of the diocese and dean for monastery affairs, Bishop Antoniy of Korsun-Shevchenkiv, celebrated the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts in the community's church for two deaneries, Korsun-Shevchenkiv and Kaniv; about forty clergy communed together that day¹¹.

On 17 January 2024, on the feast of the Synaxis of the Seventy Apostles, the brethren of the community prayed at the Liturgy in the neighbouring Saviour's Transfiguration Convent of Stebliv, together with the superior and the sisters of that house¹².

One of the brethren of the community was Archdeacon Feohnost (Mykolenko). He was born in 1970 in Stebliv, had a good voice and a musical ear and mastered several musical instruments; from 1993 he was a server of the Saviour's Transfiguration church in Stebliv, sang in the church choir and took part in parish life for eleven years⁴.

In 2004 he received the monastic tonsure with the name Feohnost, after which Metropolitan Sofroniy of Cherkasy and Kaniv ordained him deacon; he then took on the obedience of building the Saviour's Transfiguration Convent of Stebliv, and from 2009 he was a staff cleric of the Ascension church, living on its grounds and working on its improvement⁴.

When the community was founded, Archdeacon Feohnost entered the number of its brethren⁴. On 22 January 2025, in that same Ascension church, the vicar of the Cherkasy Diocese, Archbishop Ioann of Zolotonosha, performed the rite of burial of the reposed cleric, and the body was buried in the church's cemetery⁴; on 1 March, on the fortieth day, memorial services were served there and the clergy prayed at his grave¹³.