Completion of the Cathedral

The completion of the Cathedral of the Mother of God “Joy of All Who Sorrow” (the Holy Virgin Cathedral) on Geary Boulevard under St. John, who took up the work the financial dispute had frozen and finished the building in his lifetime; its five gold-leafed domes and the frescoes of Archimandrite Kiprian of Jordanville; its standing as the largest of the cathedrals of the Russian Church Abroad; the daily Liturgy and pastoral round of his last San Francisco years (1962–1966); and the crypt beneath the altar that received his body and became his shrine — the building’s contested history vindicated by the saint it now enshrines.

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

Taking Up the Frozen Work

St. John arrived in San Francisco in November 1962 to find the cathedral of his see standing unfinished, its construction halted by the financial quarrel that had paralyzed the parish (see The Cathedral Dispute). The parish of the Mother of God “Joy of All Who Sorrow” had been established on June 2, 1927, and had broken ground on the new cathedral at Geary Boulevard on June 25, 1961; but the work had stopped, and the half-raised building had become the monument to the community’s division (sfsobor.com/history.php). St. John’s first task as the new hierarch was therefore not to begin a cathedral but to finish one — and to do so while the dispute over its funds was dragging him into the civil courts.

That he succeeded under those conditions is the consistent testimony of the lives. Even as the lawsuit proceeded, the Metropolitan Cyprian biography records, “he continued the construction with prayer and unsleeping supervision” (imoph.org). Wikipedia states the result directly: “he completed the building of the Holy Virgin Cathedral and brought some measure of tranquility to the community” (Wikipedia, “John of Shanghai and San Francisco”). The construction was finished by 1965, within the saint’s lifetime — the cathedral’s own history page affirms that the building was “Completed during the earthly life of St. John, the Wonderworker of Shanghai & San Francisco” (sfsobor.com/history.php; Wikipedia gives completion in 1965).

Consecration, 1977

A crucial distinction must be drawn, because the sources are precise about it and popular accounts sometimes blur it: the cathedral was completed in St. John’s lifetime, but it was not consecrated until well after his death. The Holy Virgin Cathedral was consecrated on January 31, 1977 — nearly eleven years after the Archbishop’s repose in 1966 (sfsobor.com/history.php, giving “Consecrated: January 31, 1977”; corroborated by Wikipedia, “Holy Virgin Cathedral,” citing the cathedral’s own site) [Disputed: a small number of secondary summaries render the date as January 30, 1977, but the cathedral’s official history and Wikipedia agree on January 31, 1977, and that date is followed here]. The consecrating hierarch is not named in any source consulted, and is therefore not asserted here; St. John, who built the cathedral and lay buried beneath its altar, did not live to see it consecrated.

The gap between completion and consecration is not unusual for a great church raised by stages — interior work, iconography, and the resolution of the parish’s affairs all stood between a finished shell and a consecrated cathedral — but it places St. John’s labor exactly: he gave the building its existence, and the consecration that crowned it belonged to the community he had reconciled, performed over the very crypt in which he already rested.

The Cathedral Itself

The Holy Virgin Cathedral on Geary Boulevard is, by the testimony of the standard descriptions, the largest of the six cathedrals of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (Wikipedia, “Holy Virgin Cathedral,” “the largest of the six cathedrals of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia”) [Disputed: this is properly a statement about ROCOR’s six principal cathedrals worldwide; the looser claim that it is the “largest Russian Orthodox cathedral in the United States” is sometimes made but is not the wording the sources support, and is not asserted here]. Its most conspicuous feature is its crown of five onion domes covered in twenty-four-carat gold leaf, a landmark of San Francisco’s Richmond District (Wikipedia, “Holy Virgin Cathedral”). The building was designed by the architect Oleg N. Ivanitsky, and its interior was frescoed by the iconographer Archimandrite Kiprian (Pyzhov) of Holy Trinity Monastery, Jordanville — the foremost iconographer of the Russian Church Abroad, whose hand also adorned the Jordanville cathedral (sfsobor.com/history.php, “frescoed by the renowned iconographer, Archimandrite Kiprian of Jordanville”; Wikipedia for the architect). The cathedral stands on Geary Boulevard in San Francisco [Disputed: the cathedral’s official site gives the address as 6210 Geary Boulevard, while Wikipedia and several mirrors list 6219 Geary Boulevard; the official 6210 is followed here].

The dedication itself carries St. John’s stamp. The title “Joy of All Who Sorrow” names the Mother of God under the icon of that name — the same Marian devotion that had named his great Shanghai cathedral “Surety of Sinners” (see Bishop of Shanghai), and that ran like a thread through his whole episcopate, issuing in his treatise The Orthodox Veneration of the Mother of God (see Veneration of the Mother of God). The cathedral he completed in his last years was, fittingly, dedicated to the Theotokos whose veneration was the center of his theology and his prayer.

The choice of Archimandrite Kiprian for the frescoes binds the San Francisco cathedral to the iconographic tradition of Holy Trinity Monastery at Jordanville, the spiritual and artistic heart of the Russian Church Abroad — the same monastery from which Metropolitan Laurus and Archbishop Averky would travel for St. John’s funeral (see Repose and Relics). A cathedral built on the Pacific coast by a hierarch formed in the Serbian and Chinese dispersions, frescoed by the émigré Church’s foremost iconographer, and crowned with gilded domes visible across the Richmond District, the building gathered into one structure the whole arc of the Russian exile that St. John had served from Belgrade to Shanghai to Paris. It was, in a sense, the architectural summary of his life’s labor among the scattered Russian people.

His Final San Francisco Ministry, 1962–1966

For the three and a half years of his San Francisco episcopate, St. John kept the same rule he had kept in Belgrade, Shanghai, and Paris (see Ascetic Practice). Above all he served the Liturgy daily. Mileant’s life records that in San Francisco “Vladyka officiated in the cathedral every morning and evening, even when sick. He celebrated the Divine Liturgy daily, as he was to do for the rest of his life” (Mileant, orthochristian.com/54575.html). The daily Liturgy was not a San Francisco innovation but the continuation of a forty-year discipline; what San Francisco added was the cathedral in which it was offered.

His pastoral round was likewise unchanged. He continued the works of mercy that had defined Shanghai: the orphanage came with his flock, and St. Tikhon’s orphanage in the Richmond District stood near his cathedral, where the children of his Shanghai foundation were still in his care; he visited “the sick in local hospitals and jails,” as he had in every city he served (richmondsunsetnews.com, “St. John of Shanghai and the Richmond District,” 2023, recording his residence in the district from 1963 until 1966 and his visiting of the sick in hospitals and jails). The wonderworking accounts of the San Francisco period — the diverted drive to the Liu family that saved a life, his foreknowledge of his own death — belong to these same years (see Wonderworking Accounts). The bishop who had been dragged into court went on serving the Liturgy at dawn, visiting the hospitals, and caring for his orphans throughout the ordeal, his rule untouched by the slander.

It is striking that the saint’s wonderworking, his pastoral mercy, and his unbroken rule continued undiminished through the very years the lawsuit was grinding on (see The Cathedral Dispute). The slander reached his honor but not his life of prayer: he was in court and at the altar in the same weeks, defending himself against the charge of financial concealment in the afternoon and serving the Liturgy at dawn. The completion of the cathedral was thus achieved not in spite of an interruption to his ministry but in the midst of his ministry’s fullest exercise — the building rose while he served, visited, and was tried.

His death came not in San Francisco but in Seattle, on July 2, 1966 (June 19, Old Style), while he was accompanying the Kursk-Root Icon of the Mother of God on a tour of his diocese (Wikipedia; and see Repose and Relics). His body was returned to the cathedral he had built, where his unembalmed body lay six days incorrupt before burial.

The Crypt Beneath the Altar

St. John was buried in a sepulchre (crypt chapel) constructed beneath the main altar of the cathedral he had completed — laid, the lives note, in the lower church of the very building whose finances had been the occasion of his last sorrow (OrthodoxWiki, “laid to rest in a crypt chapel under the main altar of the new cathedral”; Wikipedia, “He was entombed beneath the altar of the Holy Virgin Cathedral, which he had built in San Francisco”). His interment within the cathedral required a civic exception: the San Francisco Board of Supervisors amended a city ordinance to permit burial within the cathedral inside the city limits (richmondsunsetnews.com, 2023).

The full narrative of the burial, the twenty-seven years of grassroots veneration at the crypt, the October 1993 examination of the relics found incorrupt, and the open shrine into which they were translated at the 1994 glorification is given in Repose and Relics, and is not repeated here. What belongs to the cathedral’s own story is the closing of a circle: the building raised amid bitter dispute, completed under a slandered bishop, consecrated only after his death, became — once his incorrupt relics were enshrined in its nave — one of the principal Orthodox pilgrimage destinations in North America. The crypt that first received him beneath the altar, and the shrine that now holds him above it, made the contested cathedral the reliquary of the saint who built it. The vindication the 1963 court rendered in law, the cathedral itself renders in stone: the church that division could not finish was finished by the bishop division tried, and it keeps his relics still.

References

Holy Virgin Cathedral, San Francisco. “History.” sfsobor.com/history.php. (Parish established June 2, 1927; groundbreaking June 25, 1961; “Completed during the earthly life of St. John”; “Consecrated: January 31, 1977”; “frescoed by the renowned iconographer, Archimandrite Kiprian of Jordanville.”)
“Holy Virgin Cathedral.” Wikipedia. (Completion 1965; consecration January 31, 1977; “the largest of the six cathedrals of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia”; five onion domes in twenty-four-carat gold leaf; architect Oleg N. Ivanitsky.)
“John of Shanghai and San Francisco.” Wikipedia. (He “completed the building of the Holy Virgin Cathedral and brought some measure of tranquility to the community”; entombed beneath the altar; repose in Seattle July 2, 1966.)
Mileant, Bishop Alexander. The Life and Miracles of St. John (Maximovitch). orthochristian.com/54575.html. (Daily Liturgy in San Francisco “every morning and evening, even when sick.”)
Metropolitan Cyprian (Holy Synod in Resistance) biography of St. John. imoph.org/Theology_en/E3d5002AgiIoannoySF.pdf. (He “continued the construction with prayer and unsleeping supervision.”)
“St. John of Shanghai and the Richmond District.” Richmond Sunset News, 2023. richmondsunsetnews.com. (St. Tikhon’s orphanage in the Richmond District; residence 1963–1966; visiting the sick in hospitals and jails; the Board of Supervisors’ ordinance amendment permitting burial within the cathedral.)
“John (Maximovitch) the Wonderworker.” OrthodoxWiki. orthodoxwiki.org. (Burial “in a crypt chapel under the main altar of the new cathedral.”)
Perekrestov, Archpriest Peter (ed.). Man of God: Saint John of Shanghai & San Francisco. San Francisco: Holy Virgin Cathedral / Nikodemos, 1994/2015. (The cathedral’s history and the saint’s San Francisco ministry as gathered in the witness anthology.)