The Cathedral Dispute

St. John’s 1962 transfer to San Francisco at the request of his old Shanghai flock, who had resettled there; the great cathedral of the Mother of God “Joy of All Who Sorrow,” whose construction had halted amid a bitter financial dispute that had paralyzed the divided Russian community; the accusations of concealing financial irregularities leveled at the Archbishop and the parish council; the civil lawsuit and the 1963 public trial, in which all were fully exonerated; and the documented sorrow of his last years — the saint tried, as the lives put it, by his own. Reported throughout, where the sources allow, through their named witnesses.

Tradition: ROCOR (glorified 1994; Moscow Patriarchate veneration affirmed 2008)

Transfer to San Francisco, 1962

After more than a decade as Archbishop in Western Europe (see Paris and Brussels), St. John was transferred by the Synod of Bishops of the Russian Church Abroad to the see of San Francisco and Western America in 1962 (Wikipedia, “John of Shanghai and San Francisco,” “In 1962, John was reassigned by the Holy Synod of the Russian Church Abroad to the see over San Francisco”). The transfer was, in the unanimous testimony of the lives, a response to the plea of the very flock he had shepherded in China: the great body of Shanghai Russians whom he had led out of the Far East had by then resettled on the American Pacific coast, and they begged the Synod for the one hierarch they trusted to heal a community now bitterly divided (Mileant, The Life and Miracles of St. John, orthochristian.com/54575.html, which frames the appointment as a response to the request of the thousands of Russians in San Francisco “who had known him in Shanghai”).

He arrived on a date the lives record with deliberate symmetry: November 21, 1962, the feast of the Entrance of the Mother of God into the Temple — twenty-eight years to the day after he had first reached Shanghai (Mileant, orthochristian.com/54575.html: “He arrived at his last assignment as bishop twenty-eight years to the day after his first arrival in Shanghai — on the feast of the Entrance of the Mother of God into the Temple, November 21, 1962”; the Metropolitan Cyprian biography concurs: “1962 (November 21) Arrives in San Francisco,” imoph.org). At first he served only as auxiliary, assisting the aged and ailing ruling hierarch Archbishop Tikhon; on Tikhon’s death he became the ruling Archbishop of San Francisco and Western America (imoph.org: “In the beginning, he helped the elderly and ailing Archbishop Tikhon, upon whose death … the Saint became Archbishop of San Francisco and Western America”) [Disputed: the Metropolitan Cyprian biography dates Archbishop Tikhon’s repose to 17 March 1963; most popular accounts give only “1963” without a day].

The Stalled Cathedral

The community St. John inherited was, in the recurring phrase of the lives, “rent by discord” — and the most visible casualty of that discord was the cathedral. The parish of the Mother of God “Joy of All Who Sorrow,” established June 2, 1927, had broken ground on a great new cathedral on Geary Boulevard on June 25, 1961; but in the interval, with the ruling Archbishop in failing health, the work had stopped dead (sfsobor.com/history.php, giving the parish founding and groundbreaking dates). Mileant’s life states the matter plainly: “in his absence the construction of a great new cathedral came to a halt as a bitter dispute paralyzed the Russian community” (Mileant, orthochristian.com/54575.html). The Metropolitan Cyprian biography specifies the nature of the paralysis: the work “had stopped because of a lack of resources and strong disagreements over the finances, which had paralyzed the Church community” (imoph.org).

The pattern was, painfully, the one St. John had already faced in Shanghai (see Bishop of Shanghai): a fractured émigré community, multiple factions on the parish board, and a half-built cathedral standing as the monument to their division. Wikipedia summarizes the situation he met on arrival in a single line: “He found a divided community and an uncompleted cathedral” (Wikipedia, “John of Shanghai and San Francisco”). As in China, he set himself to finish the building and to reconcile the people — and, as in China, his presence drew the factional fire upon himself.

The Accusations

The dispute that had frozen construction was a dispute over money — specifically, over the handling of the funds raised for the cathedral’s construction — and St. John, by taking the work in hand, was drawn into its center. According to the account preserved by the Antiochian/ACROD compilation, the conflict had a clear factional structure: “A faction of the Cathedral church board, supported by many priests and even bishops, took St. John to court accusing him of covering up financial irregularities on the part of another faction of the cathedral board” (acrod.org, “St. John of San Francisco”). The charge against the Archbishop, in other words, was not that he had himself embezzled, but that he was shielding one party to the financial quarrel from the other.

Mileant’s life records the substance and the scandal of the charge together: St. John “was forced to appear in public court — in flagrant violation of church canons — to answer to preposterous charges of concealing financial dishonesty by the Parish Council” (Mileant, orthochristian.com/54575.html). The phrase “in flagrant violation of church canons” carries weight: for a bishop to be haled before a secular tribunal by members of his own flock was, in the Orthodox canonical view, itself a grave wrong, independent of the merits of the accusation — the apostolic prohibition (1 Corinthians 6:1–7) against brethren suing one another before unbelievers stood directly behind the lives’ sense of outrage.

The Civil Lawsuit and the 1963 Trial

The quarrel passed from the parish board into the civil courts of San Francisco. Wikipedia states that St. John “was slandered by political enemies, who filed a lawsuit against him for alleged mishandling of finances related to the construction of the cathedral” (Wikipedia, “John of Shanghai and San Francisco”). The Metropolitan Cyprian biography records that “he was dragged into the civil courts; but he continued the construction with prayer and unsleeping supervision” (imoph.org). The Canadian Orthodox History Project preserves the human detail of the proceedings: “He had to sit with his lawyer (a longtime friend) in a court while the evidence was presented and analysed, and while his defence was presented” (orthodoxcanada.ca, “Saint John [Maximovitch]”).

The trial belongs to 1963; it is the subject of the dedicated ROCOR account titled “A Saint’s Final Golgotha: The Trial of St. John Maximovitch in Public Court (1963)” [Disputed: the conventional “1963” trial year rests on that article’s title and on the chronology of his San Francisco years; no consulted live source supplies a precise verdict date, and the dispute plausibly extended across 1962–1964]. That the case “made headlines in the San Francisco newspapers” is attested (acrod.org); the specific Chronicle or Examiner articles, however, are not reproduced or cited by name in any source consulted, and the claim is reported here at the level at which the sources state it — that the trial of an Orthodox archbishop was, for a season, public news in San Francisco.

The outcome was unequivocal. Mileant’s life states: “All involved were completely exonerated; but this filled Vladyka’s last years with the bitterness of slander and persecution, to which he unfailingly replied without complaint, without judging anyone, with undisturbed peacefulness” (Mileant, orthochristian.com/54575.html). The Canadian account and Wikipedia agree on the verdict in fewer words: “He was exonerated” (orthodoxcanada.ca); “He was eventually exonerated” (Wikipedia). The ACROD compilation specifies that the vindication was the court’s: St. John “was ultimately vindicated” (acrod.org). The charges of concealing financial dishonesty, in short, did not survive the trial; the Archbishop and the parish council were cleared.

The Church-Political Dimension

The lawsuit was not, at bottom, a quarrel between St. John and outsiders; it was an internal conflict within the largest cathedral parish of the Russian Church Abroad. The lives reach for the language of factional and church politics rather than of crime: “political enemies” (Wikipedia), a “faction of the Cathedral church board, supported by many priests and even bishops” (acrod.org). That last clause is the clearest sourced indication that the dispute reached up into the clergy and even the episcopate of ROCOR, and was not merely a lay squabble — it was, in part, a contest over the Archbishop himself, fought by means of the cathedral’s accounts.

St. John’s own verdict on the cause was characteristically brief. When he was asked who was responsible for the disputes that tore the community, the Metropolitan Cyprian biography records, “the Saint replied bluntly: ‘The devil’” (imoph.org). He named no faction and accused no man; he located the conflict’s origin where his whole spiritual outlook located it — not in the men quarrelling, but in the enemy who set them quarrelling. Beyond this, the sources do not elaborate the Synod-level politics; they consistently decline to assign blame to named persons, and this collection follows them in that restraint.

“Tried by His Own”: The Sorrow of His Last Years

The lives are unanimous that the trial, though it ended in vindication, broke something in St. John — not his peace, which they say it never disturbed, but his heart. The deepest wound was not the accusation but its source: that the attack came from within his own household of faith. The ACROD compilation states it most pointedly: “while St. John was ultimately vindicated, it broke his heart to see his brother clergy joining in the attack on him. Many believe that it was this sorrow that hastened his sudden death while on a parish visit to Seattle on July 2, 1966” (acrod.org). The Canadian account is gentler but agrees: “He was exonerated; but of course, the whole procedure had been a great cause of sorrow to him” (orthodoxcanada.ca); the Metropolitan Cyprian biography sums his final period as “full of bitterness, slanders, and persecution” (imoph.org).

It should be said precisely: there appears to be no surviving verbatim first-person utterance of St. John reading “I have been tried by my own.” The phrase names a theme the biographers attribute to him, not a quotation they place in his mouth; the one direct word the sources preserve on the matter is his “The devil” (imoph.org) [Disputed: popular retellings sometimes present a first-person “tried by my own” saying as St. John’s own words, but the consulted lives attribute the sorrow to him as biographers rather than quote it from him; the single attested direct utterance on the cause is “The devil”]. What the lives uniformly attest is the manner of his suffering: that he bore the slander “without complaint, without judging anyone, with undisturbed peacefulness” (Mileant), enduring “the slander, lies and persecution patiently without harboring anger or hatred in his heart” (acrod.org). The man who in Shanghai had crouched over garbage cans to rescue infants (see Orphanage and Pastoral Care) met the betrayal of his own clergy with the same self-forgetfulness — and the popular tradition, weighing the timing of his death three years after his arrival, read the sorrow itself as a kind of martyrdom that hastened his end.

Yet even amid the lawsuit the work went forward. He “continued the construction with prayer and unsleeping supervision” (imoph.org), and the cathedral whose finances had been the occasion of his trial was completed in his lifetime (see Completion of the Cathedral). The vindication, when it came, was double: the court cleared him of the charges, and the building rose. The deeper vindication came later still, when the bishop tried by his own was buried beneath that cathedral’s altar and, twenty-eight years on, glorified as a saint within its walls (see Repose and Relics).

References

Mileant, Bishop Alexander. The Life and Miracles of St. John (Maximovitch). orthochristian.com/54575.html. (1962 transfer at the request of the Shanghai flock; arrival November 21, 1962; the halted cathedral; “forced to appear in public court … preposterous charges of concealing financial dishonesty by the Parish Council”; “All involved were completely exonerated”; the peaceful endurance of slander.)
“John of Shanghai and San Francisco.” Wikipedia. (1962 reassignment by the Synod; “a divided community and an uncompleted cathedral”; lawsuit “for alleged mishandling of finances related to the construction of the cathedral”; “He was eventually exonerated.”)
“St. John of San Francisco.” Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese / ACROD. acrod.org/orthodox-christianity/articles/saints/stjohnofsanfrancisco. (The faction of the board “supported by many priests and even bishops”; “covering up financial irregularities”; “made headlines in the San Francisco newspapers”; “it broke his heart to see his brother clergy joining in the attack”; “this sorrow … hastened his sudden death”; “ultimately vindicated.”)
Metropolitan Cyprian (Holy Synod in Resistance) biography of St. John. imoph.org/Theology_en/E3d5002AgiIoannoySF.pdf. (Arrival November 21, 1962; assisting Archbishop Tikhon, then ruling on Tikhon’s death “17 March 1963”; the cathedral halted over finances; “dragged into the civil courts”; “continued the construction with prayer and unsleeping supervision”; “full of bitterness, slanders, and persecution”; “The devil.”)
Canadian Orthodox History Project. “Saint John (Maximovitch).” orthodoxcanada.ca. (Sitting with his lawyer through the presentation of evidence; “He was exonerated; but … a great cause of sorrow to him.”)
Holy Virgin Cathedral, San Francisco. “History.” sfsobor.com/history.php. (Parish established June 2, 1927; groundbreaking June 25, 1961; the cathedral “Completed during the earthly life of St. John.”)
Rose, Fr. Seraphim, and Abbot Herman (Podmoshensky). Blessed John the Wonderworker. 3rd rev. ed. Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1987. (The underlying Vita Prima narrative of the San Francisco dispute and his patient endurance.)
Perekrestov, Archpriest Peter (ed.). Man of God: Saint John of Shanghai & San Francisco. San Francisco: Holy Virgin Cathedral / Nikodemos, 1994/2015. (The collected witness anthology, in which the documentation of the San Francisco trial and the cathedral’s completion is gathered.)