Meeting Of the Lord female metochion

The Meeting of the Lord women's metochion of Hustynya Holy Trinity Convent operates in the town of Pryluky in the Chernihiv region, in the building of the Meeting of the Lord cathedral^{1, 3}.

A new stone, heated church was laid on Pryluky's market square in 1883 at a cost of sixty thousand rubles in gold, in memory of Emperor Alexander II; construction was completed in 1889, and a considerable share of the credit for it belonged to the town's mayor, Ivan Vasyliovych Dedyn, a donor and advocate for the church¹. The Poltava eparchy's own clerical book for the year 1902 likewise records the church's completion as 1889¹.

The cathedral is a three-nave stone basilica on a brick foundation with an area of 415.81 sq. m, an altar of 65.24 sq. m and a prayer hall of 312.57 sq. m¹. A town resident named Kyslyi donated to the cathedral an icon of the Meeting of the Lord in a gilded silver riza¹. The church has two patronal feasts - of the Meeting of the Lord and of the Entry of the Most Holy Theotokos into the Temple¹.

On 5 July 1929 the crosses were removed from the cathedral under a resolution of the district executive committee of 12 April of the same year, and the building was handed to the town for use as a museum and library¹. In 1930, after the districts were abolished, the newly renamed local history museum was placed in the just-closed cathedral¹.

In September 1941, under the German occupation, the parish community, led by the priest Petro Kamenetskyi, obtained permission to reopen the cathedral in time for Christmas, and on 7 January 1942 services resumed in the restored church; the priests Petro Kamenetskyi and Leonid Tunytskyi served there¹.

Father Petro Kamenetskyi, who was born in 1887 in the village of Petrivka and graduated from the Poltava theological seminary, was repressed twice by the Soviet authorities - in 1930 and in 1944, the second time being sentenced by a military tribunal to ten years' deprivation of liberty; he was rehabilitated in 1991¹. The last rector of the cathedral before its next closure was archpriest Hryhorii Stefanovych Pavlos, born in 1900, who before entering the priesthood had worked as an electrical engineer, and who died in 1978¹.

In 1960 the Meeting of the Lord cathedral was closed again and handed over for use as a local history museum. During the renovation works of that time a basement was being fitted into the cathedral, and at considerable depth the workers came upon an ancient riverbed filled in with brick, while in the disturbed soil above it archaeological finds were made - articles of medieval glass and pottery of various periods, from the pre-Mongol era to the end of the nineteenth century¹.

At the same time the wrought-iron metal fence was removed from the cathedral, the interior was rebuilt into two floors, and two crosses on the facade were covered over with portraits of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin¹.

A new chapter began in April 2007, when a session of the town council decided to hand the cathedral over to Hustynya Holy Trinity Convent; the metochion has been counted as belonging to the convent since 2008^{1, 2}. On 17 October 2009 the church was reopened to parishioners - the same day on which the town marked the 115th anniversary of its local history museum¹.

In January 2016 a missionary meeting of the diocese's youth was held in the cathedral, with the blessing of Archbishop Ireney of Nizhyn and Pryluky⁴. On 15 February 2022, on the feast of the Meeting of the Lord, the Divine Liturgy in the cathedral was celebrated by Metropolitan Kliment of Nizhyn and Pryluky, who greeted the sisters of the house and the parishioners⁵.