St. Mary Magdalene the-Equal-to-the-Apostles's Convent

The convent in honour of Saint Mary Magdalene, Equal to the Apostles, stands in the village of Zarichevo in Zakarpattia, on the Holytsia hill beyond the river Uzh, among the mountains. It is the first monastic house in the history of the Perechyn district, a region which until then had had no Orthodox monastery¹.

The idea of the convent was carried for years by local clergy and by people of the region, and in early summer 2007 the ruling bishop, Ahapit (Bevtsyk) of Mukachevo and Uzhhorod, wrote his resolution "I bless" on the petition for its opening. The monastery's own history, as its chronicle puts it, began on 29 July 2007, when a large wooden cross was consecrated on the Holytsia hill; the rite was led by the secretary of the eparchial administration, and the land for the house was allotted with the support of the then head of the district administration¹.

On 27 April 2010 the ruling bishop sent to Zarichevo a priest and a deacon charged with setting up and building the monastery. Within a month a temporary wooden church in honour of Saint Mary Magdalene was put up here, and a few weeks later the site of the foundation of the residential building was blessed. On 30 May 2010, the Sunday of All Saints, the first Divine Liturgy was served in the house, and in July monastic life itself began: the first sisters came to Zarichevo from the Dormition convent of the village of Uhlia in the Tiachiv district. On 23 August of the same year the first monastic tonsure took place in the house, and in December a priest was sent to it¹.

The official opening fell at the end of that same year: on 23 December 2010 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church blessed the opening of a convent in honour of Saint Mary Magdalene, Equal to the Apostles, in the village of Zarichevo, in the Holytsia tract of the Perechyn district of the Zakarpattia region - journal No. 65 of that session².

On 4 August 2023, the day of the commemoration of Saint Mary Magdalene, a new altar table and iconostasis were consecrated in the main church of the house, the Church of the Annunciation³. A year earlier, on 2 July 2023, a chapel-church in honour of Saint Nikyfor the Leper was consecrated here: the eparchy calls it the only chapel in Ukraine dedicated to that saint⁴, while the Church's central information service reported that the rite of consecration of a chapel-church in his honour had been performed in Ukraine for the first time⁵. In 2025 an exact copy of the icon of the Mother of God "She Who Is Quick to Hear" was brought to the house, painted for this monastery on Athos, to be placed in the Annunciation cathedral⁴.

Among the holy things of the house are icons of Saint Mary Magdalene, Equal to the Apostles, and of the Great Martyr Barbara with particles of relics⁷. In 2023 a historical essay on the monastery of 68 pages was printed in Uzhhorod, with the blessing of the Metropolitan of Mukachevo and Uzhhorod, devoted to the fifteenth anniversary of the house and built on documents of 2007-2023⁶.