The Pilgrimage Church

At Nea Prokopi on Evia stands the great modern shrine of St. John the Russian — a large pilgrimage church, dedicated in 1951, built to house the relics the refugees carried from Cappadocia. There the body of the saint lies in a silver reliquary, and there, each year on his feast of 27 May, tens of thousands of pilgrims gather. This file describes the church, the relics and their condition, and the feast.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox confessor (venerated across the Greek world; Pan-Orthodox)

From Refugee Chapel to Great Shrine

When the refugees of Prokopion first reached Evia in the 1924 exchange, they housed John’s relics in a modest existing chapel while their new village of Nea Prokopi took root (Holy Shrine of St. John the Russian, Nea Prokopi, oir.gr; see The 1924 Population Exchange). As the cult revived and grew in its new home — and as the wider Greek Orthodox world rediscovered the saint — the community undertook to build a church worthy of the veneration. The great pilgrimage Church of St. John the Russian at Nea Prokopi was raised and the relics were translated into it, the accounts giving the year 1951 for the new shrine (oir.gr; Orthodox Church in America, “Saint John the Russian,” oca.org, on the relics’ enshrinement at New Prokopion). The church has since been enlarged and adorned as the volume of pilgrimage has grown, becoming one of the principal pilgrimage centers of modern Greece.

The Relics

Within the church, the relics of St. John rest in a silver reliquary (larnax), and the body itself is displayed for veneration. By consistent report the body is remarkably preserved — small and dark, the tradition connecting its darkened color to the 1832 fire at old Prokopion (see The Cult at Old Prokopion) — vested in the garments of an altar-server, with the face covered (Orthodox Church in America, “Saint John the Russian,” oca.org, describing the relics as small, clothed in altar-server garments, with the face covered; oir.gr). The faithful venerate the reliquary and the relics with kisses; the preserved body is the physical heart of the shrine and of the whole cult (on the incorruption as tradition rather than adjudicated fact, see The Incorrupt Relics).

The Feast of 27 May

John’s feast is kept on 27 May (Old Style; 9 June on the New Style / civil calendar), the traditional date of his repose (Orthodox Church in America, “Saint John the Russian,” oca.org; oir.gr; see Repose (c. 1730)). The feast at Nea Prokopi is one of the great popular religious gatherings of Greece: on the eve and the day, pilgrims arrive in enormous numbers — many on foot, some walking long distances or approaching the shrine on their knees in fulfillment of vows — and the relics are carried in solemn procession through the village, accompanied by clergy, chanters, and vast crowds (oir.gr, on the feast and the procession; the scale of the pilgrimage is widely reported in Greek ecclesiastical and press accounts of the annual feast). The day draws not only the descendants of the Cappadocian refugees for whom John is an ancestral patron, but pilgrims from across Greece and the Orthodox world.

The Shrine in Greek Orthodox Life

The shrine at Nea Prokopi has become, in the decades since 1951, one of the most beloved and most visited pilgrimage destinations in Greece — a place people go in sickness, in trouble, before examinations and journeys and surgeries, to ask the help of “Agios Ioannis o Rossos” (Holy Shrine of St. John the Russian, oir.gr; and see, on the healings and the scale of the cult, A Healer Across Two Peoples). The village of Nea Prokopi itself is in effect organized around the shrine and the pilgrimage it draws.

The saint’s presence has also shaped the wider spiritual life of northern Evia. The near-contemporary elder St. Iakovos Tsalikis (1920–1991), abbot of the Monastery of St. David the Elder near Rovies — himself a refugee child of the Asia Minor Catastrophe — lived and served within the same island landscape, held a deep personal veneration for St. John the Russian, and encouraged pilgrimage to his relics; the two saints of Evia, the eighteenth-century Russian confessor and the twentieth-century Greek elder, are joined in the devotion of the island (see St. Iakovos Tsalikis of Evia and A Healer Across Two Peoples).

See Also

References

  • Holy Shrine of St. John the Russian, Nea Prokopi (Evia). “A Brief Life of Saint John the Russian.” oir.gr. (The refugee chapel and the shrine of 1951; the silver reliquary; the feast of 27 May and its procession; the scale of pilgrimage.)
  • Orthodox Church in America. “Saint John the Russian and Confessor, Whose Relics Are on the Island of Euboia.” oca.org/saints/lives/1953/05/27. (The relics on Euboea, their condition and vesting, and the feast of 27 May.)