Moscow, March 19, 2014
On these days all churches and monasteries of the Crimean Diocese uplifted prayers before the icon of Archbishop Luka for multiplying love and peace on the peninsula.
Archbishop Luka (born Valentin Felixovich Voyno-Yasenetsky) was born in Kerch in 1877. After graduation from the higher school he decided that he should be involved only the activities “useful for suffering people,” and chose medicine and later became a priest.
He carried out his ministry in Soviet period, so he had to face many hardships, the archbishop went through arrests, trials and spent 11 years in exile.
Archbishop Luka was a ruling bishop of Crimea from 1946 to 1961. He received the Stalin reward for his book on surgery in 1946.
He died on June 11, 1961, on the Day of All Russian Saints. Relics of Archbishop Luka were found in 1996 and are kept in the Holy Trinity Cathedral in Simferopol. The Russian Church canonized him among new martyrs and confessors in 2000.
