Orthodox Christians of Latvia Celebrate the Day of Remembrance of John Pommer 0 27

Bishop John loved to retreat to his summer house near Kisezeris — he prayed, contemplated, wrote, and worked on a lathe — he was a man of remarkable strength. When advised to hire security, he would simply wave it off, responding with words from the Gospel: "The Lord is my protector — whom shall I fear?"

But the times were troubled, and one day assassins broke into his home, tortured him, tying him to a table, and then killed him. The criminals were never found, and the case was closed. It was convenient for someone…

Important Task

His great-grandfather was one of the first Latvians to embrace Orthodoxy, and he himself, hailing from the farmstead of Ilzeskalns near Cesis, graduated from the Riga Theological Seminary and the Kyiv Theological Academy.

He taught at the Chernihiv Theological Seminary, served as inspector of the Vologda and Lithuanian Theological Seminaries, and was the bishop of Penza and Saransk, Slutsk and Minsk, Taganrog, Azov and Yekaterinoslav province, Staritsa and Tver.

In 1921, His Holiness Patriarch Tikhon, responding to the requests of the Latvian Orthodox flock, sent to Latvia the only ethnic Latvian at that time in the Russian Orthodox Church — Archbishop John of Penza and Saransk.

He faced the most complex tasks in Latvia of maintaining canonical ties with the Russian Orthodox Church and organizing the legal status of the Latvian Orthodox Church, its state legitimization, which had been completely absent after the country gained independence.

Procession at the Train Station

The bishop was greeted at the Riga train station on July 24, 1921, with great ceremony, in a procession.

He settled in the basement of the Nativity of Christ Cathedral — as a protest against the fact that the Catholic bishop had occupied the residence of the Orthodox bishops on Maza Pils Street.

A prominent church figure, diplomat, possessing a magnificent gift of speech, and fluent in both Russian and Latvian, Archbishop John became a deputy of the II Saeima of the Latvian Republic in 1925 from the block of Orthodox voters and Russian public organizations.

He delivered passionate speeches from the podium in defense of his flock, which he never divided by nationality. It is no coincidence that he was called a "man of struggle"…

…The reliquary with his relics is in a place of honor in the Nativity Cathedral of Riga, at the right side altar, where anyone coming to the shrine in faith can venerate it.

Saint Martyr John is our most "direct and immediate" intercessor before God. Pray to him, ask him for everything you need. But only for what leads to good…