Diaconia: Sisterhoods
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 St.
Dimitry's Sisterhood of Nurses
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The
community of mercy in the name of St. Martha and Maria
St. Dimitry's Sisterhood
of Nurses
This sisterhood was formed
in 1991 at the 1st City Hospital. Its members were parishioners of the
hospital's Church of St. Prince Dimitry that had been returned to the Church
in 1990. The church developed as a centre for Orthodox graduates in medicine
and those who wished to help the patients. The official blessing of His
Holiness Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia for the foundation
of a sisterhood came on 28 May 1991 - the day when the hospital church
celebrates the memory of its patron-saint. Today the sisterhood has 80
members. It is directed by a Council and a Senior Sister elected by the
general meeting of the sisterhood. Archpriest Arkady Shatov, rector of
the hospital church, acts as the sisterhood's father confessor. St. Dimitry's
Sisterhood is a religious organisation, not a monastic community. Many
of its sisters are married and have children. It offers membership to those
members of the Orthodox Church who are ready to commit themselves to the
service of their neighbours. Before entering the sisterhood an applicant
is to undergo a year-long test of her ability to fulfil the obedience.
At present the sisterhood is engaged in diaconical work in several closely
interconnected fields:
St. Dimitry's Nursing School. This is an Orthodox medical school
holding a state licence. Its founders are the Government of Moscow and
St. Dimitry's Sisterhood. Its principal is Alexander Vladimirovich Flint.
It offers training in nursing. Along with traditional medical disciplines
the students are given religious instruction. They are also actively involved
in the work of the sisterhood, fulfilling various obediences in the hospital
and the refectory. The school has day-time and evening-time classes. The
total number of students is 215 (183 at the day-time department and 32
at the evening-time department). It also offers a pre-entry course for
25 applicants. The full training takes 2 years and 10 months. A graduate
is granted a standard state certificate qualifying her as "a general nurse".
Since its foundation in 1992 the school has trained over 160 nurses. About
70 of them are working now in the 1st City Hospital, while 7 have continued
their studies at higher medical institutions. The rest have been sent to
work at various clinics in Moscow.
Work at the hospital. The sisterhood and the school have provided
most of the junior and secondary nursing staff at the nine most difficult
wards of the 1st City Hospital including those for casualty, after-trauma
reanimation, surgery, after-trauma rehabilitation, men's and a women's
neurology and emergency. Many members of the sisterhood and students of
the evening department are on the staff of the hospital working as nurses
and orderlies and drawing state salaries. Those students who are not on
the staff work 8 hours a month in the wards. Parishioners of the Church
of St. Prince Dimitry also fulfil one-time obediences in the hospital,
such as clearing up. The sisters of mercy not only fulfil their professional
duty but also give spiritual support to patients by talking to those who
need consolation and helping those who are preparing for baptism, confession
or communion. On major feast-days the clergy, sisters, students and parishioners
make a round of the hospital, offering congratulations of the day to the
patients and the staff.
District nurses' service. The sisterhood holds a state licence
giving it the right to organise district nurses' service. This service
includes: Visiting nurses. At the request of those who need a visiting
nurse's services but cannot pay the commercial prices for it, St. Dimitry's
Sisterhood provides such services for moderate prices or, in a number of
cases, altogether free of charge. Sisters stand on point-duty for 12 people,
with 2 of them requiring twenty-four-hour attendance, and 15 people who
need attendance once in 2 or 3 weeks. In addition to medical care, sisters
as well as parishioners help those under their care in shopping for food,
changing clothes and clearing up their places. Medical advice. Those parishioners
of the hospital Church of St. Prince Dimitry who hold degrees in medicine,
including several general practitioners, several surgeons, a neuropatologist,
a traumatologist, a dermatologist, an oncologist and other specialists,
provide free medical advice both at the sisterhood and at home. Among those
who turn to them for advice are parishioners, staff and students of the
nursing school, their relatives and sometimes even outsiders.
Work with children. Through the common efforts of the sisterhood
and the Southwest District Administration of the Moscow Department of Education,
the first Orthodox girls' asylum was founded in Moscow in 1994. For a year
and a half of its existence it has given shelter to 32 girls from 3 to
13 years of age who came mostly from families suffering from alcoholic
problems. The asylum has an official permission to keep only 6 girls at
the asylum until they come of age, while the rest may stay there for only
6 months. After that they are either brought back to their families if
the family situation has improved or sent out to guardians or family orphanages
or boarding schools. At present there are 13 girls at the asylum. Children
of school age are taught at the asylum according to programmes designed
for various levels of development. Classes are given by Orthodox teachers
who are put on the part-time staff list at a nearby school. Some girls
attend Orthodox gymnasium. In addition to general subjects the girls are
taught practical crafts and skills such as cloth-washing, clearing up,
cooking, drawing and sewing. The girls also attend classes in music and
stage puppet performances. Once a month they go to the 1st City Hospital
to attend to the patients. On 9 April 1994, with the blessing of His Holiness
Patriarch Alexy II, a domestic church dedicated Sts Martyrs Vera (Faith),
Nadezhda (Hope) and Lubov (Love) and their mother Sofia (Wisdom) was consecrated
at the asylum. Morning and evening prayers are said in it every day with
the participation of the girls. Father Arkady Shatov, father confessor
of the sisterhood, comes every fortnight to celebrate divine liturgy. On
Sundays the girls go to the nearest church or the hospital church. During
their stay at the asylum the girls are not isolated from social life: they
visit exhibitions and museums, go on highking and spend their holidays
at summer camps. In their work with children, St. Dimitry's sisters also
pay regular visits to Children's House No. 13, a children's acceptance
and distribution centre and other orphanages. They help to clear up these
houses, talk to children, bring gifts to them and take them to St. Dimitry's
Church on holidays.
Distribution of humanitarian aid. The sisterhood has organised
distribution of humanitarian aid (clothes, food, medicines) coming from
various organisations abroad. The aid is distributed to large families,
refugees, recent convicts, pensioners and other socially unprotected people.
To distribute medicines and medical equipment the sisterhood has organised
a chemist’s shop directed by a professional pharmaceutist. Medicines are
given out to whoever asks for them if they are unavailable or too expensive
at local drugstores. At the same time the distribution of medicines is
placed under a strict control. Major clinics receive medicines from the
sisterhood only on the condition that they will distribute them free. Special
medical equipment is sent in the first place to those wards in which members
of the sisterhood work.
The Sunday school. The Sunday school is attended by 150 children
from 5 to 15 years of age. In addition to religious instruction, those
who wish it can study drawing, wood carving and needlework. Pupils make
regular pilgrimages to holy places in Moscow and other cities in Russia.
The refectory. The refectory can accommodate 200 people. On workdays
it caters to the sisters, the staff and students of the nursing school,
as well as St. Dimitry's parishioners coming here after matins. The refectory
also provides food for large families, one-parent families, refugees and
low-income citizens. On holidays the refectory organises common meals for
the sisterhood, parishioners and children from asylums and orphanages.
The telephone number of St. Dimitry's Sisterhood:
(095) 236-92-63.
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The community of
mercy in the name of St. Martha and Maria. The history and the present
The history
May I remind you, dear readers, that the above-mentioned
community was founded in February, 1909 by the Grand Duchess Elizaveta
Feodorovna Romanoff. In the short period of its existence the community
which exemplified an Orthodox women’ ministry to God and people succeed
to involve hundreds of the daughters of Russia in the deeds of mercy. The
idea of the community assumed a severe monastic way of life without taking
the veil and attracted young women, since it offered them a choice: either
to leave the community unimpededly if they got married, or take the veil
in the skete of the community, or simply take the veil and continue their
obedience in it.
Remarkably, how this idea which had forestalled the time even then proved
its exigency today. There was an inner freedom and the right of choice,
on the one hand, and a potential readiness of Russian soul to sacrificial
service for mercy, on the other hand. Even in the severe days of ours this
has found a devoted response in women’s hearts.
Powerful and magnificent was the entrance of the non-Orthodox daughter
into Russian Or-thodoxy, and she revealed to the world an unparalleled
example of a church charity institution. The life of the community proceeded
in full harmony of labour and prayer, spiritual ministry and practical
mercifulness in the community and outside of it. The hospital of the community,
its out-patients’ clinic and pharmacy were considered exemplary. The poor
were given gratuitous medical aid and medicine. A cheap kitchen, a children’s
asylum, a Sunday school, a sewing workshop were functioning there. Gymnasium,
hospitals, asylums for the poor were instituted at the community. The sisters
used to visit doss-houses, slums, poor people at their homes, they pro-vided
clothes, footwear, medical care, job opportunities, tutoring. They managed
to help thou-sands of the suffering in the short period of the community’s
existence.
The year 1918 put an end to all this. Cruelty and implacability of the
revolution were incom-patible with such notions as mercy, charity, Christian
service to the others. On the 18th of June 1918 Elizaveta Feodorovna, the
Great Mother, who had dedicated her whole life to the prosperity of Russia,
ended her earthly journey in the depth of the mine in the outskirts of
an Ural town Alapayevsk. The new masters viewed the Grand Duchess only
as a representative of the over-thrown dynasty. After the arrest and death
of the mother-superior the community has almost ceased its activities and
was finally closed in 1926.
The present
We have been trying to blot out of our consciousness the notions of charity
and mercifulness for years, regarding them as survivals of the past years
of exploitation. The thousand-years-old moral principles seemed to be destroyed.
However, as soon as it became possible to recall our historical remembrances,
it turned out that our Christian souls are alive, and our genetic memory
had preserved almost everything. We didn’t know, though, what to begin
with, when we just started to revive the ministry of charity. That was
why these activities were, at first, exported from the West. Numerous foreign
charity agencies rushed into Russia, and it was a pity that they directed
their activities in accordance with a third-world-countries experience.
The history of our Fatherland abounds in experience of the ministry of
mercy, and the feat of the Grand Duch-ess Elizaveta Feodorovna is particularly
significant in it.
Everyone who realised the concept of our own Russian tradition of mercifulness
had a firm conviction that the community in the name of St.Martha and Maria
must be restored to life. There was no rejection of good deeds of the visiting
missionaries, and the sisters respected their will to help the suffering.
But it was already eight years ago when the first sisters of mercy be-came
confident that the new form of Orthodox ministry to God and people initiated
in Russia by the Grand Duchess Elizaveta Feodorovna will be perceived and
accepted by the modern society, will find a deep-rooted response in the
souls of our compassionate women. And thus it happened. In 1990 the Community
of the first sisters was restored to life at the Churches of St.Righteous
Martha and Maria and the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos. The battle
for the restitution of the historical complex of buildings to the Russian
Orthodox Church has begun. No one knows what the outcome of the cause could
be, if not a deliberate de-cision of Moscow mayor Y.M.Louzhkov who halted
the claims of a number of state, commercial, public and certain religious
bodies.
In October, 1992 the administration of Moscow transferred by its enactment
the complex of buildings of the Community in the name of St.Martha and
Maria to the possession of the Russian Orthodox Church, but it was only
two years later that the sisters entered it despite of the resis-tance
of certain alien organisations. In October, 1995 His Holiness Patriarch
Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia blessed an official opening of the Community.
Twenty sisters headed by their mother-superior labour in the field of mercy
today. Their efforts follow the same direction which have been once outlined
by the abbess of the Community.
Medical activities. Twelve sisters are intensely trained
at the Medical college N2. The course of studies is ar-ranged especially
for sisters of the community who are conferred a certificate with permission
to work both as visiting nurses and in various clinics. The sisters take
care of lonely patients who, in fact, require daily treatment. Each sister
at-tends to two persons on the average. On the wish of patients a priest
of the community visits them, confesses them, administers to them communion
and extreme unction. The community takes no money for its care for the
sick.
But the primary medical service of the community is that which is rendered
to the Institute of N.V.Sklifassovsky. Five days a week twelve sisters
work in burns surgery and reanimation de-partments. The sisters are entrusted
to perform the most complicated bandaging, treatment of injuries, preparation
for skin transplantation, tools maintenance, nourishment of patients. The
Institute’s personnel admire their voluntary assistants. They set themselves
at every task with a prayer and smile. It is too often that they must take
care of tramps who are usually lousy, sick with scab, tuberculosis, syphilis.
The sisters treat them with compassion, bring them food from the frugal
refectory of the community, console them, treat and give clean clothing.
The sisters try to be on good terms with their patients, to learn their
needs. At that point the presence of a priest becomes evident. The infernal
flame does not discriminate between the rich and the poor, a sin stays
the same sin no matter who has committed it. A hospital bunk is often the
place where people start thinking about their past experience. The baptism,
the confession, the Eucharist and the extreme unction become a conscious
necessity for patients. There were in-stances when a hopeless patient would
quickly recover despite of doctors’ prognosis after confes-sion and communion.
At first, patients, particularly wealthy ones, could not understand
what kind of curious girls these sisters are. These young, healthy beautiful
girls handle the sick without payment and are glad in addition. These people
soon experience a profound mental transformation, and a deep re-spect to
such an attitude to labour as to the mercy of God makes them to reconsider
many things.
The sisters get tired. In the evening they return home, in the community,
tired and hungry. The patients with burns exhaust all their energy. They
need meal and sleep badly, but they can-not neglect the rules of hygiene.
Infectious clothes must be washed, disinfected, they need a warm shower.
Yet there is no shower, no hot water, they must support themselves on their
own. Frugal meal added, one can easily imagine how fatigued the young girls
are. Then what a miracle, what a joy the evening prayer in the garden in
front of the Church of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos, or
in the hospital church becomes! The sisters kneel and ask each other to
forgive them, they read their daily prayers, sing troparions together and
peacefully leave for their cells to read their private prayers. Free evenings
occur sometimes. Then they would gather in a drawing-room and play the
piano of Elizaveta Feodorovna, read verses, or sing spiritual songs with
the accompaniment of a guitar.
Spiritual, social and cultural activities. The sisters
regularly visit the shelter N6 for the aged and invalids. Four elder sisters
do this obedience. There are more than five hundred patients in the shelter.
The sisters are primarily preoccupied with missionary work among them.
Together with a priest they bring the word of God to these people, they
help the old people in the shelter in their baptism, receiving commun-ion,
extreme unction. A domestic chapel where regular services are celebrated
is established at the shelter.
Spiritual care is also taken about the shelter N7 for mentally retarded
children. The sisters bring the children regularly to the community where
they attend services, confess their sins and receive communion. They are
offered tea and given presents afterwards. The children who are unable
to move are visited by the sisters and a priest right in the shelter.
More than 20 indigent persons - the homeless, refugees, the poor receive
daily food and cloth-ing in the community. The homeless require a special
attitude and are obliged to do something helpful. They take shovels, brooms,
hammers, or any other tools and work for the welfare of the community.
Spiritual and material assistance of the community gives to a number of
them a chance to change their life. Fifteen persons managed to abandon
their vagrancy. They presently rent an apartment and run a joint-stock
company to sell eggs which allows them to share their earnings with the
sisters.
The community has also started staging performances with a crew of five
sisters. Headed by Marina Fominova they prepared three concert-programmes:
"The Motherly Love", "The Great Mother", "Assuage my Sorrows" which include
spiritual verses, stories and musical pieces. The programmes address the
sick, the aged and disabled in shelters, soldiers, prisoners. A children’s
programme is getting prepared.
Another aspect of the life of the community is distribution of the humanitarian
aid. Two driv-ers of the community obtained in summer 1995 international
driver’s licences from the State Mo-tor Licensing and Inspection Department
and were permitted to drive lorries and buses. German and Swiss charity
agencies trust their trailers to these drivers, and now each month shipments
for Russia arrive in the community. Since November 1995 till now the community
facilitated purveying of humanitarian aid to a number of religious, state
and public organisations, to indigent people. Among them are:
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monasteries and churches of Moscow, Moscow region, the Dioceses of Kalouga
and Ivanovo;
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an Orthodox charity complex in Saraktash village of the Diocese of Orenbourg;
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shelters for the aged and orphanages in Moscow;
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a shelter for disabled children in the Diocese of Samara;
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the Institute of N.V.Sklifassovsky (medication, clothing for the recovering
poor);
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an association of the disabled "Co-ordination"; · a social protection department
of Firovsky district in Tver region;
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"Memory of War" charity association of psychological and social support
for parents of the sol-diers killed in Afghanistan;
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a religious public association "Faith, Love, Salvation";
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the clinical department of the Oncological scientific centre of N.N.Blokhin;
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dozens of refugees, former prisoners, families with many children, families
of priests, young widows and many others.
The community cannot extend its charity activities if a number of sisters
is not increased. This is still impossible because there is no place for
them to live in. Only a half of the building where the sisters reside now
belongs to them. Various organisations persist in maintaining their presence
on the territory of the community which prevents capital repairs, and the
community is facing risk to stay without heating in winter.
There are still no opportunities for the development of the activities
of the community itself. A lycee, a sewing workshop, a bakery and folk-art
works are already instituted. There also exists a crew of Orthodox doctors
ready to provide medical aid to refugees free of charge. These units will
start their activities immediately if a place for them is provided.
At the moment the outdoor look of the community evokes sad reflections.
The pharmacy building corrupts, the chambers of the Grand Duchess need
emergency repairs. The works of Nesterov and Konenkov are in danger of
destruction in the Church of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos.
The reconstruction of the community and its development depends on two
as-pects:
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Financing.
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Withdrawal of alien organisations from the territory of the community.
Total costs of the restoration are estimated at 70-80 milliard of roubles,
and it is partially funded by the city, though considerable donations are
needed for the completion of works.
Head of the community of mercy
in the name of St.Martha and Maria
M.N.Kriuchkova
Telephone for contacts: (095) 231-84-46
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