Blessing the Holy Chinese Martyrs Icon for Khabarovsk Seminary Chapel

The Chinese Orthodox Church

English translation by Nina Tkachuk Dimas – 30/5/13

On May 23, 2013 in Khabarovsk’s Nativity Cathedral, on completion of the prayer before the start of the Conference on the work of the Russian-English and English-Chinese dictionary of Orthodox vocabulary, the icons of Hieromartyr Mitrophan of Beijing and 221 Chinese martyrs were consecrated. Fr. Dionisy Pozdnyaev, rector of the SS Peter and Paul parish in Hong Kong (China) led the prayer service and the blessing of the icons. It is noteworthy that during the prayer service one of the conference guests read the prayers beginning with the “Trisagion” to “Our Father” in Chinese.

The icon of the 222 Chinese martyrs and the separate image of the martyr Mitrophan (Ji) were painted by the nun Irina (Moroz), a Khabarovsk iconographer now living in Vyatka. The icons for the Khabarovsk seminary chapel arrived in Khabarovsk on the eve of the “Days of China ” as part of the III-local Cyril and Methodius conference.

Information: The 222 Chinese martyrs – suffered during the Yihetuan rebellion (“Boxer Rebellion”) in Beijing. Honored as Orthodox saints, their memory is kept on June 24. At the beginning of the XX century, as a result of activity of the Russian Spiritual Mission in Beijing there were a few hundred Orthodox Christians. In the summer of 1900 participants in the “Boxer Rebellion” in China declared their goal was to fight against foreign influence in the country, and one of their slogans was to fight against Christianity and those Chinese who converted to Christianity. During the street fighting, subsequently called “Bartholomew’s night in Beijing”, despite the torture and abuse by Yihetuan, these people did not renounce Orthodoxy. Heading the host of Saints is the Martyr Mitrophan Ji, the first Chinese priest, ordained bySt. Nicholas of Japan. 222 persons among the dead were identified; their remains were gathered and buried in the crypt of the newly built All Holy Martyrs Church in Beijing; but, during the “cultural revolution” this temple was destroyed and its crypt flooded. In 1902, the Chinese martyrs were canonized by Church of Russia as locally venerated saints. A special service was prepared for Chinese New Martyrs even before 1917 and a special icon was prepared.

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