St John (Maximovich), Archbishop of Shanghai and San Francisco (1966)
Michael Maximovitch was born in 1896 into a family that would flee the Russian revolution to Serbia, where he was tonsured and ordained. As bishop of Shanghai from 1934 he was a tireless shepherd, raising up churches, an orphanage that gathered abandoned children from the streets, and hospitals; he was known to go about barefoot and to pray through the night.
Coming feasts: Friday, July 2, 2027
When the communists came, he led his refugee flock out of China to an island in the Philippines, and would not rest until the doors of America were opened to them. He served in western Europe and, from 1962, as archbishop of San Francisco, where he reposed in 1966. His body was found incorrupt, and the wonders at his shrine are without number. He was glorified in 1994 by the Russian Church Abroad.
On the feast day Orthros sets the life of St John Maximovich of Shanghai before you, beside the day's fast and readings, free to read.
