Herman of Sviatohirsk

Venerable Herman of Sviatohirsk (in the world Grigory Ivanovich Klitsa, 1816-1890) was an archimandrite and abbot of the Sviatohirsk Monastery, of Greek descent, a former merchant and a disciple of the Glinsk rule. He was numbered among the locally venerated saints by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church on 8 May 2008. He is commemorated on 24 August.

Beginnings

He was born on 3 March 1816 at Nizhyn, in Chernigov province, in a large merchant family. His grandfather was a Greek from the island of Cephalonia. He was baptized in honour of Saint Gregory Palamas. He graduated from the Greek school in Nizhyn, the gymnasium of Prince Bezborodko and, in 1829, the Practical Commercial Academy in Moscow. In the 1830s he was engaged in trade. In 1835, returning from the Irbit fair, he fell through the ice of the Volga and, after a miraculous rescue, vowed to become a monk.

In 1840, with the blessing of Archbishop Meletius of Kharkiv, he went as a novice to the Glinsk Hermitage, where he worked at the monastery apiary. On 20 June 1842 he was tonsured a rassophore and appointed clerk of the monastery. In 1844 he moved to the recently restored Sviatohirsk Monastery, where on 7 March 1845 he was tonsured a monk in honour of Saint Germanus, Patriarch of Constantinople, and on 17 March ordained hierodeacon. He was precentor and introduced the Glinsk chant to the monastery. Because of a conflict with the brethren, he left in 1846 and lived in other monasteries. He returned in 1847, and on 12 May was ordained hieromonk. In 1850 he was named sacristan of the monastery.

As abbot

After the death of Abbot Arsenius, the brethren elected Father Herman abbot on 25 October 1859. According to tradition, he refused, but the Mother of God appeared to him and told him that she would govern the monastery, and he would be only a staff in her hands. On 30 October he was raised to abbot, and on 16 December 1861, at the visit of Emperor Alexander II, he was made archimandrite. In 1863 he was named dean of the monasteries of the Kharkiv diocese. As abbot he strictly kept the Glinsk rule, expanded the monastery and built new sketes and metochia, of which the best known is the Saviour skete of Sviatohirsk, on the site of the crash of the tsar's train at Borki, for which he received the Order of Saint Anna, first class.

He fell asleep on 13 April 1890, having received the Holy Mysteries, and was buried at the entrance of the monastery's hospital church, where devout admirers soon built a chapel. After the revolution of 1917 the tomb was desecrated by militia workers, and part of the remains were buried near the fence of the Akhtyrka farmstead. In 1995 the brethren of the revived monastery restored the crypt. In 2000 a portrait of him was painted from old photographs. On 8 May 2008 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church decided on his local canonization in the Donetsk diocese, in the synaxis of the saints of Sviatohirsk, and the glorification took place on 12 July 2008, in the Dormition Cathedral of the lavra, by Metropolitan Volodymyr.