John of Shanghai and San Francisco

Saint John Maximovitch, Archbishop of Shanghai and San Francisco, was a hierarch and ascetic of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, a pastor in China, Western Europe and the United States. He was born in 1896 in what is now Ukraine and departed to the Lord in 1966, in Seattle. The faithful knew him as a gentle spiritual father and wonderworker; he is also called Saint John the Wonderworker.

Childhood and studies

He was born on 4 June 1896 (Old Style), named Mikhail Borisovich Maximovich, in the village of Adamovka in the Kharkov province, into a noble family that supported the Sviatogorsk monastery. His father, Boris, had Serbian roots, and his mother was named Glafira. Among his ancestors was Saint John of Tobolsk, canonized in 1916. A sickly child, he collected icons and church books and read the lives of the saints with passion. His French nanny passed, under the child's influence, from Catholicism to Orthodoxy.

From 1907 to 1914 he attended the Poltava cadet school, then, at his parents' insistence, the Faculty of Law at Kharkov, which he finished in 1918. Spiritually he drew close to Archbishop Anthony Khrapovitsky, who became his guide.

In Yugoslavia

After the revolution his family went to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes; in 1921 he reached Belgrade. He attended the Faculty of Theology, finishing in 1925, and in poverty earned his living selling newspapers. In 1924 he was made reader by Metropolitan Anthony, and in 1926 he was tonsured a monk at the Milkovo Monastery with the name John, in honour of Saint John of Tobolsk. He was ordained hierodeacon, then priest in 1926. After his ordination, those close to him say, he no longer slept in a bed and ate only once a day. He taught religion at the gymnasium of Velika Kikinda and then at the seminary of Bitola under Saint Nikolaj Velimirovic, where he also served in Greek; it was his custom to serve in the language of the place. He visited the sick in hospitals, caring for them with prayer and Holy Communion.

In Shanghai

In 1934 he was consecrated bishop and assigned to Shanghai. He found the church of St Nicholas unfinished and a community divided along ethnic lines. He took part in charitable institutions, founded an orphanage and a home for the children of the poor, and worked for the unity of the Church and for ties with the Orthodox Serbs and Greeks there. Miracles were ascribed to his prayers. Even under the Japanese occupation he continued his pastoral work and ignored the curfew. Being the only Russian hierarch in China who refused to submit to the Moscow Patriarchate under Soviet control, he was raised in 1946 to archbishop of China.

When the Communists took power in 1949, the Russian enclave was forced to leave, first to a refugee camp on the island of Tubabao in the Philippines, then to Australia and the United States. John went to Washington to obtain that his people be received as refugees; in 1950 a law was signed allowing four thousand Europeans from the Far East to enter.

Western Europe and San Francisco

In 1951 he was appointed to the Archdiocese of Western Europe, with his see at Paris, then at Brussels. His work of compiling lives of saints made many pre-⁠Schism Western saints known to Orthodoxy. In 1962 he was moved to San Francisco, where he found a divided community and an unfinished cathedral. He completed the cathedral of the Mother of God, Joy of All Who Sorrow, brought some calm to the community, and was slandered by opponents, who brought a lawsuit against him over the handling of the building funds; he was found innocent. He took part in preparing the canonization of Saint John of Kronstadt, in 1964.

Repose and veneration

He fell asleep on 2 July 1966 (19 June, Old Style), during a visit to Seattle, and was laid beneath the altar of the cathedral in San Francisco. The Russian Church Outside of Russia canonized him on 2 July 1994, and the Bishops' Council of the Russian Church glorified him for the whole Church on 24 June 2008. He is commemorated on 19 June (Old Style), the day of his repose, and the finding of his relics on 29 September. In Greece he is honoured at the monastery of Saint Nectarios at Trikorfo in Phocis and in Katerini.