Saint John of Shanghai and San Francisco (Maximovitch)
Archbishop, wonderworker of the Russian diaspora
- Feast day
- July 2
- Lived
- 1896–1966
- Patronage
- Refugees, orphans, the displaced, the sick
Saint John of Shanghai and San Francisco is the great wonderworker of the twentieth-century diaspora — a bishop who never slept lying down, walked barefoot, and personally carried Orthodoxy from China to the Philippines to Western Europe to California.
Life
Born Michael Maximovitch in Kharkov province, he fled Russia after the revolution, was tonsured in Serbia and consecrated bishop for Shanghai in 1934. There he built a cathedral, gathered thousands of orphans off the streets, and searched the slums at night for abandoned children.
When the communists took China he evacuated his entire flock of five thousand to a tent camp on the island of Tubabao in the Philippines, then personally lobbied the United States Congress until the refugees were admitted. He later served in Paris and Brussels, restoring the veneration of ancient Western saints, and finally in San Francisco.
Veneration
He kept a total fast through the first week of Lent, served the Liturgy every day of his life, and slept only in a chair. Non-Orthodox hospital staff in Shanghai and San Francisco reported his prayers healing the dying. His incorrupt relics lie in the Holy Virgin Cathedral in San Francisco, and he was glorified in 1994.