Goshcha Protection of the Mother of God Convent

The Protection of the Mother of God convent of Hoshcha stands in the settlement of Hoshcha in the Rivne region⁷. Hoshcha was preceded by an Old Rus settlement whose hillfort survives not far off, and the name itself is connected with the words for hospitality and for a churchyard².

In the fourteenth century Hoshcha belonged to the boyar Kyrdeyev, and later to the Hoysky magnates². At the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the town became one of the centres from which the sect of the Socinians spread; founded by Faustus Socinus (1539-1604), it denied the dogma of Christ and the Holy Spirit as Hypostases of the Divine Trinity². For their temporary prosperity in Hoshcha the Socinians were indebted to the protection of prince Roman Hoysky, the owner of the town; in the middle of the seventeenth century the sect collapsed, and in 1658 the Catholics obtained the prohibition of Socinianism in Poland². After prince Roman's death Hoshcha was owned by his sister, Iryna Solomyretska².

Zealous for the Orthodox faith, the mistress of Hoshcha, princess Iryna Solomyretska, founded here in 1638 a men's monastery and a school on the model of the Kyiv-Mohyla Collegium¹. The care of the school the princess entrusted to the Metropolitan of Kyiv, St Petro Mohyla¹. The first superiors of the monastery and rectors of the school were the hegumens Ihnatiy Oksenovych-Starushych and Innokentiy Gizel, later rectors of the Kyiv-Mohyla Collegium themselves¹.

The services for the monks and the pupils were held in the stone church of the holy Archangel Michael¹. By one account it existed even before the monastery and school were established at it, and by another it was built by Solomyretska in 1639¹. The house keeps an old portrait of Solomyretska: the princess is shown with a sheet of paper on which is written, in Polish, "the right to a monastery and schools in Hoshcha. The year 1639"¹.

In time the monastery was turned to the Union, and in the eighteenth century the church was rebuilt¹. Before that it was crowned by three helmet-shaped domes - over the narthex, the middle and the sanctuary; in the rebuilding the walls of the narthex and the sanctuary were raised level with the central part and a gable roof was set on them, hiding beneath it the western and eastern cupolas, now without their finials¹.

In 1796 the church became an Orthodox parish¹. When the Uniate monastery was closed in 1833 its buildings were handed to the parish, but they were later taken down as decayed, one dwelling house being left¹.

In 1888-1889 the look of the church changed again: without dismantling the vaults of the central cupola, its stone drum was built up and a wooden cupola raised on it¹. At the end of the nineteenth century an iconostasis was set in the church, painted in the style of the works of Viktor Vasnetsov, and it stands there still¹.

In the Soviet period secular institutions occupied the house beside the church¹. In 1991 this house was returned to the clergy, in 1993 the parish was turned into a monastery, and in 1994 the first sisters came here¹.

In 1996 a bell tower was built in the house, in 1997-1999 the refectory block, which also holds the kitchen and the needlework rooms, in 2000 a utility building, and in 2002-2006 a two-storey block of cells with the gate church of St Nicholas of Myra, consecrated in 2012¹. At the skete of the holy Myrrh-bearing Women in the village of Symoniv, Hoshcha district, a church was under construction⁵.

Among the holy things of the house are the Zastavnytsia icon of the Mother of God and the icon of the Mother of God "Compassion"⁴. By tradition the Zastavnytsia image was brought from a wooden church that stood "beyond the pond"⁴. Without giving the name of this icon, but calling it grace-bearing, the Volhynian historian of the end of the nineteenth century Nikolai Teodorovich wrote of it as a holy thing of the church of St Michael⁴. The icon carries many votive pendants testifying to healings through prayers to the Mother of God⁴.

The icon of the Mother of God "Weep not for Me, Mother" ("Compassion") is venerated in the house on 19 June⁸. Every year on the day of the celebration the clergy, the sisters and the pilgrims go in prayer, in a cross procession, from the monastery to the chapel not far from the house, built for the 2000th anniversary of the Nativity of Christ, where a festal moleben and the blessing of water are performed⁸.

For thirty years the superior of the house of the Protection in Hoshcha was abbess Iryna (Sachuk), who laboured over the revival of the shrine after the years of the Soviet godless power⁶. She departed to the Lord on 10 August 2024, in the 62nd year of her life, and is buried on the monastery grounds beside the main church of the house⁶. The Rivne eparchy calls her the first superior and the foundress of the house: on 10 August 2025, on the ninth Sunday after Pentecost, the Divine Liturgy was celebrated in the monastery on the anniversary of her repose, led by Metropolitan Anatoliy of Polissia and Sarny⁹.

On 3 June 2019, on the day of the veneration of the Vladimir icon of the Mother of God and the day of the memory of the holy equals-to-the-apostles Constantine and Helen, the festal Divine Liturgy in the Hoshcha convent of the Protection was led by Archbishop Mykhail of Prague and the Czech Lands¹⁰.

The house keeps the Protection of the Most Holy Mother of God on 1 (14) October, and the memory of St Nicholas of Myra on 9 (22) May and 6 (19) December³. On 14 October 2025 the patronal feast was led by Metropolitan Pymen of Rivne and Ostroh; after the Liturgy there was a cross procession around the house and a memorial litia at the grave of the reposed abbess Iryna⁷.