MARY AND THE SAINTS 93
BECOMING JOHN
HEALING THE
DIVIDE
Azealouslyasceticmonkrenownedformiraculous
healings was alsoaleaderoftheSovietémigré community
throughout the worldM
ichael Maximovitch was born to an
aristocratic family in 1896 in Ad-
amovka, a Russian village in what is
now northeastern Ukraine. His par-
ents named him for an archangel,
an act that seemed to influence his life: He was fascinated
from an early age with life at a nearby monastery, and he
took to dressing his toy soldiers as monks. Growing up, he
devoured biographies of the saints and sought to emulate
their lives of humility, compassion, and abstinence, even
as he attended a Russian military academy and studied
law at a local university.
In 1921, following the RussianRevolution, Maximov-
itch and his family immigrated to Belgrade, Yugoslavia,
where he was able to return to university and graduate
with a theology degree. He discovered a mentor in Arch-
bishop Anthony Khrapovitsky, who later became the
founding chief hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church
outside of Russia.
In 1926, Maximovitch took the first steps to becoming
a monk and a priest in the Russian Orthodox tradition;
he received the name John, was ordained a hieromonk
(priest-monk), and became a schoolteacher. Though chil-
dren warmed to John, he was quite strict and practiced a
daily regimen of self-mortification, in-
cluding fasting, walking barefoot, all-
night prayer, and sleeping on the floor.
He was known for frequenting hospi-
tals and visiting suffering people.
Upon being ordained a bishop in
1934, John was assigned to Shanghai,China, home to a large Russian Orthodox community
made up of a variety of warring factions, including those
who had roots in China dating to the late 17th century and
refugees from the Bolshevik Revolution of 1916. Bishop
John began to heal the deep divisions and win the devo-
tion of his parishioners. He developed a reputation for an
ability to heal through prayer, and his followers believed he
was a clairvoyant.
Bishop John was so admired that when two leaders of
the Shanghai Russian Orthodox community were killed
for resisting the Japanese occupiers during the Sino-
Japanese War in1937,Bishop John assumed leadership of
the terrified community. He was eventually named Arch-
bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church in China.
The community’s trials continued, however, and when
the Communists assumed power in China in 1949, Chris-
tians across the country, including the Russian Orthodox,
were persecuted. The Russians fled to the Philippines,
and Bishop John successfully lobbied the American gov-
ernment to allow the émigrés to make the United States
their home.
In 1962, he became Archbishop of San Francisco, Rus-
sian Orthodoxy’s largest parish outside of what was then
the Soviet Union, and again united a divided community.
Archbishop John died four years later,
while visiting Seattle, and was buried in
a sepulcher in the Holy Virgin Cathedral
in San Francisco.
In 1994, Archbishop John was canon-
ized. A shrine in the cathedral contains
some of his relics. ▪A BISHOP IN SHANGHAI
Known as “the Wonderworker,”
Saint John suffered from a
speech impediment that he
feared would render him unfit
to be a bishop. Moses endured a
similar struggle.