Your Beatitude, Metropolitan Onufry,
Your Eminence, Metropolitan Pavel and the brotherhood of the Kyiv Caves Monastery,
Most Reverend Hierarchs, Reverend Fathers, Brothers and Sisters in Christ!

The martyrdom of Metropolitan Vladimir of Kyiv one hundred years ago was a bloody sign and symbol of the persecution of the Orthodox Church in the 20th century. He was the first bishop martyr and was followed by a host of Orthodox bishops who gave witness to Christ under the communist attempt to extinguish the Christian faith. It is meet and right to remember and honor Metropolitan Vladimir and the cloud of martyrs and confessors in Ukraine and Russia and Belarus and other countries ruled by the communist ideology of militant atheism.

In the memory of the Orthodox Church in America the violent persecutions which started one hundred years ago were deeply connected to the witness of bishops and priests who had served the Orthodox mission in North America during the thirty or forty years before the 20th century persecutions.

The first priest to be martyred one hundred years ago was Fr. Ioann Kochurov, murdered in Tsarskoe Selo near Petrograd in October 1917. Fr Ioann had labored as a zealous missionary priest in the United States at the beginning of the 20th century, and is remembered as the builder of Holy Trinity Cathedral in Chicago.

Fr. Alexander Hotovitzky, who had labored in the United States as a builder of churches and helper to hierarchs joined the company of saints and martyrs in the death machine of the 1930s. Fr. Alexander was born in Kremenetz, Volhynia, and is therefore one of the direct connections of the Orthodox Church in America to priests and missionaries from Ukraine.

Another such direct connection is provided by Metropolitan Leonty (Turkevich), Primate of the American Metropolia from 1950 to 1965. Born also in Kremenetz, a student of the Kyiv Theological Academy, Metropolitan Leonty, came to the United States as a young man, at the invitation of Bishop Tikhon (Bellavin) served as a priest and head of the American theological seminary for many years, was a delegate Metropolitan Tikhon, of the North American Diocese to the All Russian Church Council in Moscow, and participated in the election of his former archpastor in America as Patriarch of Moscow.

The 20th century burdens and trials of the persecuted Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union were therefore never a distant and foreign story for the Orthodox Church in America. Our living connection to Kyiv and the Kyiv Caves Lavra continues to inspire us. When the first divine service in the Lavra was celebrated in 1988, during the celebration of the Millennium of the Baptism of Rus, a representative of our Church was part of this joyful Liturgy. During the thirty years since then, we have witnessed the dynamic new life of the Lavra with rejoicing. We are witnessing from afar – with sadness and anxiety – the war in eastern Ukraine. And today, we are thankful to God that our representative is with you to convey to you our warm and brotherly greeting, extending to you our love, assuring you of our prayers for you, and asking you for your prayers for us – for the Orthodox Church in America and its mission in North America.

+ TIKHON
Archbishop of Washington
Metropolitan of All America and Canada