St. Raphael was the first Orthodox bishop consecrated in America, where he faithfully served the mission of the Russian Orthodox Church under St. Tikhon, the future Patriarch of Moscow, together with a number of other saints.
Nikolaos Sotiropoulos
I turned around and saw him. He was tall, with small, round eyes and slight wrinkles in the corner. His beard covered his neck, and from there it divided into three parts. It was black and a little curly.
The Romanian Patriarchate issued a statement noting that the canonization of a saint doesn’t mean that person never made any mistakes, even serious mistakes, and never had anything to repent of.
The Ekaterinburg Diocese is celebrating its annual Royal Days in honor of the holy Royal Martyrs, Grand Duchess Elizabeth and Nun Barbara, and others.
Hieromonk Ignaty (Shestakov)
In fact, it was not just a ruler who was killed, but a family. It was the terrible and demonstrative murder of a Russian family. They stormed into a domestic church and smashed everything inside, flooding everything with blood, desecrating everything, and then the history of our people in the twentieth century was stained with this blood.