Father Longinus. Bishop of Banchensky Longin (Zhar), together with the clergy, monks and laity, stood up for the defense of the Holy Orthodox Faith
Longin's father, Mikhail Zhar in the world, built a unique children's town where babies with severe congenital diseases come back to life. Father Longin himself suffered three heart attacks and two heart surgeries in recent years, and at the same time remained alive. He knows why: true love works wonders.
“I once buried a young woman,” Father Longin recalls. “It was winter. I look, after the funeral service, four boys remained at the grave. Everyone left, and they are completely frozen, in rubber boots on their bare feet and do not go anywhere. It was 20 degrees outside. And the smallest of them was still tiny.
I ask: "Why don't you go home?" And they tell me: “We won’t go without mom. We have nowhere to go." Their father left them, and their mother died. “Your mother is now in heaven,” I say. “Will you come to live with me?” They nod. Well, I brought them to the monastery.
Just a couple of months later, a newborn girl was thrown to the gate in a banana box. Mom gave birth to her on New Year's Eve, threw it into a box and brought it to us. How long she lay there in the cold, I do not know. I took her in my hands, she was cold as a stone. Completely frozen. We quickly took her to the hospital. All the doctors said there was no chance. But with God's help, the girl was saved. The doctors themselves gave her the last name Happy. And we named her Katenka.
Father met Styopka in a boarding school for disabled children. The armless boy jumped forward and read his own verses to Father Longinus. Then he followed on the heels of the priest with the mothers, and when he was about to leave, Styopa pressed his face against the cassock and asked: “Please take me away from here!”. Batiushka began to cry and took Styopa away with him.
“At first we thought: well, we’ll take 50. Then - 100. Then we decided - and we’ll be able to watch 150 children, but ... Well, poor people, they suffered so much in their still short life that I don’t have the strength to know how it hurts, and do not take away! And when there were already 200 of them, I thought - well, that's all! But what about “everyone”?.. Now I say, probably, there will be 300.”
The shelter accepts children from all over the country, including the disabled. Some of the children suffer from cerebral palsy and cancer. A separate building was built for 50 HIV-infected children. Thanks to the efforts of the priest, magnificent medical rooms and the most modern equipment appeared in the shelter. Since the 90s, the father, together with like-minded people, has built a gym, playrooms, a swimming pool, an aviary with peacocks and even a pony stable for children. Still don't believe in bright people? They are among us.
Remember the documentary "Outpost" about the monastery orphanage in Bancheny (on the Ukrainian-Romanian border)? The film tells the story of Father Longin (Heat) who adopted 140 children. Our correspondent went to the border to find out how they are doing now.
Almost 5 years have passed since the film was released, and during this time a lot of events have happened in Bancheny - Father Longin adopted 113 more children, of which 46 are HIV-positive. The Trinity Cathedral and a separate house for the disabled (for 100 people) are being completed in the monastery. Our correspondent went to the monastery to see everything with his own eyes. See our photo report and listen to the story of Father Longin, the abbot of the monastery and the adoptive father of 253 children:
Children are always very welcome in the monastery. Teachers or sisters sometimes bring them to visit the monks
Archimandrite Longin (Zhar), rector of the Holy Ascension Monastery in Bancheny, talks about how children and monks get along together:
Holy Ascension Monastery. The orphanage used to be right here
But over time, a separate complex was built 4 kilometers from the monastery. Four spacious buildings, a temple and even your own swimming pool
The children are cared for by nuns from the Boyana Convent (also nearby) and professional teachers and caregivers
There are 253 children in the orphanage in total. Of these, 46 children are diagnosed with HIV
The Banchen Shelter is a family-type orphanage. All children are adopted or are under the care of Father Longin (Heat), the rector of the Holy Ascension Monastery and confessor of the Boyansky Monastery.
A quarter of all children in the orphanage are disabled. In the photo, everyone's favorite is a boy with hydrocephalus - Nectarius
There is a special regime in the building with HIV-infected children. Children receive the necessary therapy, enhanced nutrition, special care
Nun Elisaveta, the eldest in the building where HIV-infected children live, tells how the first girl diagnosed with HIV appeared in the orphanage:
All orphanage children go to the village school, and most of them are at school.
Babies sleep during the day
girls room
boys room
While the kids were sleeping, the older boys, the main characters of the film "Outpost", sang a song about their mother especially for the readers of the site merciolie.ru. Roman is the soloist, Taras is on the right in a wheelchair, Stepan is on the left:
High school students released from school to help with sowing
Seedlings are brought from the monastery greenhouses
Planting tomatoes today
Children are happy to help. Even some kids asked for time off from quiet time to help in the field.
On the field, we also met with Father Longin - he also took part in planting seedlings
Wherever Father Longin goes, he is always surrounded by children!
The monastery even bred ponies for children. Someone gave a pair, and now there are 12 of them! There are also peacocks in the monastery!
The film "Outpost" tells only about the orphanage, but at the monastery there is also an almshouse where 45 old women live (of which 12 have recently taken tonsure), and 8 grandfathers live in the fraternal building with the brothers
Grandmothers are cared for by nurses, grandfathers are cared for by monks
The oldest grandmother is 88 years old
By autumn, the construction of a house for the disabled will be completed at the monastery. It is designed for 100 people - matured disabled children from the shelter will move into it
Read a more detailed report about the monastery and Orthodoxy in Bukovina in one of the next issues of the Neskuchny Sad magazine.
Photo and Text: Ekaterina STEPANOVA
Archimandrite Longin (Zhar): Father who adopted… 253 babies
- ... A father in some monastery in western Ukraine adopted 253 babies.
How much? - I ask my interlocutor.
Two hundred and fifty three, he repeats separately. - He also built houses for them, founded two monasteries and is building a shelter for the disabled. And yet he never asks anyone for anything.
At this point, my brain finally "failed". Either this is not true, or everyone should know about it. Or so: too beautiful to be true. And it's a shame if it's not true. There is only one way - to find out and see everything for yourself.
Banchens - where are they?
The Patriarch was ahead of me. As early as October 2 of this year, His Holiness Patriarch Kirill, during his visit to the Chernivtsi region, visited the house at the Holy Ascension Monastery in the village of Bancheny.
"Comrade Ribbentrop, let's chop more evenly here!" - they say, it was with these words that in August 1939 Vyacheslav Molotov proposed to his German colleague to straighten the border of the USSR, which went around the ledge of the Polish and Romanian lands. He didn't really mind. Thus, a very unusual Gertsaevsky district was formed in the Chernivtsi region, where the absolute majority of the population is Romanians. In those parts, the village of Bancheny stands, and the Holy Ascension Monastery is not far from it.
“This is a completely unique part of our country and the Church,” says the vicar of the Chernivtsi diocese, Bishop Meletiy of Khotyn. - The locals live in their own way, in the Romanian tradition. There are still people in the villages who do not understand the Ukrainian language, although the region has been in Ukraine for 70 years. Churches officially celebrate the service in the new style and in Romanian. There is a special blessing for this from His Holiness Patriarch Alexy I. The fact is that the Romanian Church is new-timer, therefore, when the Gertsaevsky district became the canonical territory of the Moscow Patriarchate, in order to prevent possible splits, the parishes retained the right to serve as they used to. But in the Banchen Monastery, probably the largest non-Slavic monastery in the Russian Church, they also serve in Romanian, but still in the old style.”
The monastery is headed by Archimandrite Longin. The one whom two and a half hundred children call dad. This is the truth, which is more incredible than fiction.
Monastery in the wilderness
Our story began only 17 years ago, - says Father Amphilochius, a resident of the monastery. He speaks in a Russian-Ukrainian-Romanian mixture of languages. Almost all locals say this to visitors. Among themselves - as it is convenient for anyone to speak and understand. Such a kind of little Babylon to you. - When Father Longin came here with the first four monks, there was a wasteland here. But the locals knew and loved the priest well - before he was tonsured, he served in the neighborhood, in the church in the village of Boyany. Therefore, when the construction of the monastery began, many helpers gathered. Those who lived in the surrounding villages came to the construction site and worked. Those who were far away helped in any way they could: with bricks, and logs, and food, and money.
Holy Ascension Monastery. Photo: Ekaterina Stepanova
Now there are already seven churches on the territory of the monastery, a refectory, fraternal buildings, a bell tower, a fountain, an aviary with peacocks, a pony stable ...
So we have children, and therefore ponies, - Father Amphilochius, as an experienced guide, anticipates my question. - At first the shelter was in a monastery. Father Longin took his first children back in Boyany, and they moved with him, one might say, to a construction site. When there were more children than monks, they began to think about building a separate building for them. A convenient place was found four kilometers from the monastery, in the village of Molnitsa. And in Boyany at that time, a female monastic community was formed on the basis of the parish. The sisters began to take care of the children. And so it happened that now in Bancheny there is a male monastery (it now has 86 monks), in Boyany there is a female monastery (it has 120 nuns), and in Molnitsa there is an orphanage. Father Longin is the confessor of both monasteries and the foster father of all the children in the orphanage.
“We need to love children!”
Longinus is a monastic name. His real name is Michael. Mikhail Vasilievich Zhar. He is only 46 years old, 20 of them has been raising orphans.
Banchen shelter. Photo: Ekaterina Stepanova
Whose idea was it for the shelter? Yours?
God, - says so that you believe. Faith, after all, in principle, does not require any evidence. And what difference does it make who first decided to gather unwanted children, feed them, nurse them, treat them, teach them to read and write?
The story of the appearance of the first children in the monastery has already become a local legend. Longin's father (then Father Mikhail) had cows in Boyany. In the early 1990s, the time was hungry. And he began to donate milk to the local baby house. The nurses, in gratitude, decided to show the father to whom this milk goes. The conditions in which the children were shocked father Mikhail. He grabbed two babies in an armful and took them with him. This was the beginning of the "family-type orphanage", as the monastery shelter is now officially called, and the father of three children born in marriage became the father of five. Then father Mikhail adopted 27 more. And then his passport ran out of pages where children are recorded. The next 224 children he took under guardianship. Collected them all over the region. Will go somewhere on business - will definitely bring.
Once I buried a young woman, - Father Longin recalls. - It was winter. I look, after the funeral service, four boys remained at the grave. Everyone left, and they are completely frozen, in rubber boots on their bare feet and do not go anywhere. It was 20 degrees outside. And the smallest of them was still tiny. I ask: "Why don't you go home?" And they tell me: “We won’t go without mom. We have nowhere to go." Their father left them, and their mother died. “Your mom is in heaven now,” I say. “Will you come to live with me?” They nod. Well, I brought them to the monastery.
Once a newborn girl in a banana box was thrown up to the gate.
Mom gave birth to her on New Year's Eve, threw it into a box and brought it to us. How long she lay there in the cold, I don’t know, ”Father Longin says with a soft, melodious Romanian accent. - I took her in my hands, she was as cold as a stone. Completely frozen. We quickly took her to the hospital. All the doctors said there was no chance. But with God's help, the girl was saved. The doctors themselves gave her the last name Happy. And we named her Katenka.
Father met Styopka in a boarding school for disabled children. The armless boy jumped forward and read his own verses to Father Longinus. Then he followed on the heels of the priest with the mothers, and when he was about to leave, Styopa pressed his face to the cassock and asked: “Please take me away from here!” Batiushka burst into tears, hugged Styopa and took him away. Here, in the orphanage, the boy began to read books. A lot of books. Now he likes to argue. Mother Elizabeth affectionately calls him a "philosopher".
And his friend Romka is a “musician”, because he plays the synthesizer, which they put - on purpose - next to his bed. This boy has difficulty moving around. He has cerebral palsy.
But here the atmosphere is this: no one feels unhappy or unnecessary.
What else do kids need? Just to love you the way you are.
At first we thought: well, we’ll take 50. Then - 100. Then we decided - and we’ll be able to watch 150 children, but ... Well, poor people, they suffered so much in their still short life that I don’t have the strength to know how much it hurts them, and not take it with you! And when there were already 200 of them, I thought - well, that's all! But what about “everyone”?.. Now I say, probably, there will be 300.
This is Father Longin making plans for the future. His own and his children, future too.
Yakby could hug all the orphans on earth, I would have tserobiv - when he is very worried, then the words in Russian and Ukrainian are mixed up with him. - They are weak. They must be loved. We need to love us children. And help me, so that they survived. I can't live without them! Von is my medicine. If it wasn’t for me, I would have lived in vain on earth then.
For some reason, he is not afraid to adopt children with cerebral palsy. Strange, right? Then he began to collect those whom even doctors waved their hand at: they say, they are not tenants. Yes, I'm talking about AIDS.
When AIDS recedes
There are 49 such people in the shelter today (six of them have now been diagnosed). Batiushka collected them from orphanages from all over Ukraine. “Due to” a special contingent of a priest, the statistics of “children's AIDS” in many regions of Ukraine has decreased, and in Chernivtsi region it has increased. These are statistics, numbers, commas. What does he and all of us care about her, right?
There is a special regime in the building with HIV-infected children.
In the shelter, children receive all the necessary therapy, here for them - a separate medical staff, enhanced nutrition. On the basis of the shelter, a regional AIDS center has been opened, which cooperates with the Anti-AIDS Foundation of Elena Franchuk. Batiushka, by the way, cooperates with a huge number of people. Not only in Ukraine. For example, someone who has visited any orphanage in Ukraine, here in the orphanage, something seems strange in the clothes of children. And the clothes are new, not washed, in size. After all, usually in orphanages, children wear the so-called “charitable assistance”, that is, “second hand”. And here the priest signed a contract with a Turkish company for the supply of clothes for children. New and true to size!
How did children with a terrible diagnosis end up in the orphanage?
Very simple. In the baby house, Father Longin saw a beautiful girl. Her mother refused her because her daughter was HIV-infected. The nurses also shied away from her. In the patriarchal Western Ukrainian society, the words "AIDS" and "death" are somewhere nearby.
When I saw her, it hurt me a lot,” recalls the priest. - She looked at me so sadly, and I was afraid to touch her, so as not to bring an infection to my children.
I think that Father Longin did not sleep that night, remembering this two-month-old girl. And in the morning I asked the brothers in the monastery to furnish the room as best as possible, put an elegant bed there, because a child, a girl, would live here.
Little Larisa - that was her name - was baptized, now she is Philatea. Here, in the shelter, the girl underwent a course of retroviral therapy. Doctors were very surprised when they recently saw her tests: there are no traces of HIV infection in her blood. Now Philateya lives with the rest of the children, she has moved to the fifth grade.
How it's done?
Father Longinus is idolized in Banchen. He gives people hope. Live like people. And not only by raising children.
Girls room. Photo: Ekaterina Stepanova
Well, imagine, God knows where the monastery appeared, and then - or rather, almost simultaneously - a children's town, and the villages that are nearby began to be gasified.
The gas "branch" to the shelter was thrown across the Prut River. At the same time, the village got it.
I know you are not asking for help. Fundamentally, I say to Father Mikhail. - But how is it that you and your children have everything?
I think it is the Lord himself who puts it on the hearts of those who want to do good. There are a lot of good people in Ukraine... Who are next to us.
He remembers how one day the kitchen ran out of oil. And there is no money to buy, but it is necessary to cook for so many souls! At a time, for salads alone (about 15-20 kilograms of vegetables) - “prіrva oliї” is spent.
And suddenly a person from local businessmen appears: “I want,” he says, “to help your children, I have my own bowl, I promise you bring it, take it. It's from the heart."
Father blessed him and kissed him. He, to celebrate, then almost brought a tank of oil.
Batiushka does not say that the first brick in the foundation of one of the bell towers of the monastery was laid in 2004 by the then Prime Minister of Ukraine Yanukovych. Then he came again, brought gifts for the children and a home theater. And President Yushchenko awarded him an order. It is easier for an order-bearing priest to resolve issues. Gas was extended to the shelter not without the help of Yuriy Boyko and Igor Bakai. You also need to know how to reach so high.
The nuns say that “one more woman, who wanted to help the children, brought a cow, and a friend brought a share, two hectares, widdala.”
On these hectares for the children's town, the nuns grow potatoes.
In the grounds of the monastery, by the way, there is everything: fields, orchards, orchards, a farm, flower greenhouses. The monastery and the orphanage have enough of their products in abundance. The surplus is delivered to the surrounding social institutions free of charge. Children work on monastic farms on a par with adults.
What happens?
Three-story buildings, bright windows, marble stairs, equipped with lifts for those children who find it difficult to move independently. This is a family-type orphanage. Each house is a different color. Pink, yellow, blue…
Inside the parquet is covered with carpets. Not carpet, but real soft carpets.
The walls are hung with paintings: nature, religious subjects. Everywhere - aquariums with fish. Birds are singing. Lots of greenery. And around the buildings - an incredible amount of flowers.
Children live four to six people in a room. A sister is assigned to each room. In total, 104 people take care of children in the shelter, of which 65 are nuns, the rest are paid employees: nurses, cooks, educators. The shelter itself is like a gingerbread town. Facades of buildings, windows, entrances - everything is decorated with flowers. On the lawns - figurines of fairy-tale characters. In the backyard there is a playground and a stadium. Once, the younger children asked their father, Father Longin, for rollers. Batiushka bought roller skates for the children. Everyone. More than 200 pairs. But it turned out that there was no place to roller-skate in the village. Then the monks from Banchen came to the rescue and laid asphalt in the backyard of the orphanage. Now you can ride a bike, and roller-skate, and walk with a baby stroller there.
Is it a monastic business to entertain children?
The monastic path and the family path are very different, Father Longin agrees. - And our shelter is separate from the monastery. But I look at my monks and see a lot of goodness in their souls. They know when their children have birthdays, buy gifts for them, even ask to visit to congratulate them. And I don't think it's bad. Heaven rejoices if someone brings joy to an orphan. A monk will not depart from his monastic life, but he must also give good to others. It's not a sin. You know, when the children lived in the monastery, it happened that people came to the service and asked where Father Longin was? And I play football with my children. Imagine what a temptation it must be for people! The abbot - and in football instead of service. So what to do? "Dad, let's play football!" - How can you refuse? I think the Lord will forgive me this sin if it is a sin. Without mercy no one will be saved. None.
What will happen?
The eldest pupil, “donya”, was the first to marry four years ago to a good guy, by the way, from a neighboring village. The tables were laid, the guests were called - probably a thousand came. Or more. The whole area was walking.
A year later - again a wedding: he gave out another daughter. Then more...
And how many more weddings are to come, where “tato Mikhailo” will sit in a place of honor, as befits a father, and be proud of “his children”!
The axis will be calm, like the stench of the mustache will become. I’m on a holy day before me! .. Oh, good luck! the priest says dreamily.
Of course, the skeptic will say that the doctors could have made a mistake with the diagnosis of little Larisa. As in five other cases. Of course, children who have recovered from cerebral palsy, swimming in a real pool on the territory of a family home, do not prove anything. And it goes without saying that faith in the Lord and the prayers of Father Longinus, the monks and nuns of his monastery, whom the children call "mothers", the help of everyone who has been helping them for almost 20 years, has nothing to do with it. I won't argue. Then you don’t argue that Father Longin, who indiscriminately takes on feeding and raising children with “bouquets” of diseases - from cerebral palsy to AIDS with congenital hepatitis - and even if not saving them from death, then prolonging their life in care and love, - Holy man. Deal?
By the age of 46, Father Longin had suffered three heart attacks and two heart surgeries. Someone is holding him on our sinful earth ... You, by chance, do not know - Who?
Victor Buzyan /
Archimandrite Longin (Zhar): Father who adopted… 253 babies
Monastery in a wasteland (click on the text - the article below the video will open)
Our history began only 17 years ago,” says Father Amphilochius, a resident of the monastery. He speaks in a Russian-Ukrainian-Romanian mixture of languages. Almost all locals say this to visitors. Among themselves - as it is convenient for anyone to speak and understand. Such a kind of little Babylon to you. - When Father Longin came here with the first four monks, there was a wasteland here. But the locals knew and loved the priest well - before he was tonsured, he served in the neighborhood, in the church in the village of Boyany. Therefore, when the construction of the monastery began, many helpers gathered. Those who lived in the surrounding villages came to the construction site and worked. Those who were far away helped in any way they could: with bricks, and logs, and food, and money. Now there are already seven churches on the territory of the monastery, a refectory, fraternal buildings, a bell tower, a fountain, an aviary with peacocks, a pony stable ... -So we have children, that's why ponies, - Father Amphilochius, as an experienced guide, anticipates my question. - At first the shelter was in a monastery. Father Longin took his first children back in Boyany, and they moved with him, one might say, to a construction site. When there were more children than monks, they began to think about building a separate building for them. A convenient place was found four kilometers from the monastery, in the village of Molnitsa. And in Boyany at that time, a female monastic community was formed on the basis of the parish. The sisters began to take care of the children. And so it happened that now in Bancheny there is a male monastery (it now has 86 monks), in Boyany there is a female monastery (it has 120 nuns), and in Molnitsa there is an orphanage. Father Longin is the confessor of both monasteries and the foster father of all the children in the orphanage.
“We need to love children!” Longinus is a monastic name. His real name is Michael. Mikhail Vasilievich Zhar. He is only 46 years old, 20 of them has been raising orphans. Whose idea was it for the shelter? Yours? -God, - says so that you believe. Faith, after all, in principle, does not require any evidence. And what difference does it make who first decided to gather unwanted children, feed them, nurse them, treat them, teach them to read and write? The story of the appearance of the first children in the monastery has already become a local legend. Longin's father (then Father Mikhail) had cows in Boyany. In the early 1990s, the time was hungry. And he began to donate milk to the local baby house. The nurses, in gratitude, decided to show the father to whom this milk goes. The conditions in which the children were shocked father Mikhail. He grabbed two babies in an armful and took them with him. This was the beginning of the "family-type orphanage", as the monastery shelter is now officially called, and the father of three children born in marriage became the father of five. Then father Mikhail adopted 27 more. And then his passport ran out of pages where children are recorded. The next 224 children he took under guardianship. Collected them all over the region. Will go somewhere on business - will definitely bring. “I once buried a young woman,” Father Longin recalls. - It was winter. I look, after the funeral service, four boys remained at the grave. Everyone left, and they are completely frozen, in rubber boots on their bare feet and do not go anywhere. It was 20 degrees outside. And the smallest of them was still tiny. I ask: "Why don't you go home?" And they tell me: “We won’t go without mom. We have nowhere to go." Their father left them, and their mother died. “Your mom is in heaven now,” I say. “Will you come to live with me?” They nod. Well, I brought them to the monastery. Once a newborn girl in a banana box was thrown up to the gate. -Mom gave birth to her on New Year's Eve, threw it into a box and brought it to us. How long she lay there in the cold, I don’t know,” Father Longin says with a soft, melodious Romanian accent. - I took her in my hands, she was as cold as a stone. Completely frozen. We quickly took her to the hospital. All the doctors said there was no chance. But with God's help, the girl was saved. The doctors themselves gave her the last name Happy. And we named her Katenka. Father met Styopka in a boarding school for disabled children. The armless boy jumped forward and read his own verses to Father Longinus. Then he followed on the heels of the priest with the mothers, and when he was about to leave, Styopa pressed his face against the cassock and asked: “Please take me away from here! "Batiushka burst into tears, hugged Styopa and took him away. Here, in the orphanage, the boy began to read books. A lot of books. Now he likes to argue. Mother Elizabeth affectionately calls him a "philosopher". And his friend Romka is a “musician”, because he plays the synthesizer, which they put - on purpose - next to his bed. This boy has difficulty moving around. He has cerebral palsy. But here the atmosphere is this: no one feels unhappy or unnecessary. What else do kids need? Just to love you the way you are. - At first we thought: well, we’ll take 50. Then - 100. Then we decided - and we’ll be able to watch 150 children, but ... Well, they, the poor, have suffered so much in their still short life that I don’t have the strength to know how it hurts, and do not take away! And when there were already 200 of them, I thought - well, that's all! But what about “everyone”?.. Now I say, probably, there will be 300. This is Father Longin making plans for the future. His own and his children, future too. - Yakby could hug all the orphans on earth, I wouldn’t be afraid, - when he is very worried, then the words in Russian and Ukrainian are mixed up. - They are weak. They must be loved. We need to love us children. And help me, so that they survived. I can't live without them! Von is my medicine. If it wasn’t for me, I would have lived in vain on earth then. For some reason, he is not afraid to adopt children with cerebral palsy. Strange, right? Then he began to collect those whom even doctors waved their hand at: they say, they are not tenants. Yes, I'm talking about AIDS.
When AIDS recedes Today there are 49 such people in the shelter (six of them have now been diagnosed). Batiushka collected them from orphanages from all over Ukraine. “Due to” a special contingent of a priest, the statistics of “children's AIDS” in many regions of Ukraine has decreased, and in Chernivtsi region it has increased. These are statistics, numbers, commas. What does he and all of us care about her, right? In the shelter, children receive all the necessary therapy, here for them - a separate medical staff, enhanced nutrition. On the basis of the shelter, a regional AIDS center has been opened, which cooperates with the Anti-AIDS Foundation of Elena Franchuk. Batiushka, by the way, cooperates with a huge number of people. Not only in Ukraine. For example, someone who has visited any orphanage in Ukraine, here in the orphanage, something seems strange in the clothes of children. And the clothes are new, not washed, in size. After all, usually in orphanages, children wear the so-called “charitable assistance”, that is, “second hand”. And here the priest signed a contract with a Turkish company for the supply of clothes for children. New and true to size! How did children with a terrible diagnosis end up in the orphanage? Very simple. In the baby house, Father Longin saw a beautiful girl. Her mother refused her because her daughter was HIV-infected. The nurses also shied away from her. In the patriarchal Western Ukrainian society, the words "AIDS" and "death" are somewhere nearby. “When I saw her, it hurt me a lot,” recalls the priest. - She looked at me so sadly, and I was afraid to touch her, so as not to bring an infection to my children. I think that Father Longin did not sleep that night, remembering this two-month-old girl. And in the morning I asked the brothers in the monastery to furnish the room as best as possible, put an elegant bed there, because a child, a girl, would live here. Little Larisa - that was her name - was baptized, now she is Philatea. Here, in the shelter, the girl underwent a course of retroviral therapy. Doctors were very surprised when they recently saw her tests: there are no traces of HIV infection in her blood. Now Philateya lives with the rest of the children, she has moved to the fifth grade. How it's done? Father Longinus is idolized in Banchen. He gives people hope. Live like people. And not only by raising children. Well, imagine, God knows where the monastery appeared, and then - or rather, almost simultaneously - a children's town, and the villages that are nearby began to be gasified. The gas "branch" to the shelter was thrown across the Prut River. At the same time, the village got it. - I know you're not asking for help. Fundamentally,” I say to Father Michael. - But how is it that you and your children have everything? -I think it is the Lord himself who puts it on the hearts of those who want to do good. There are a lot of good people in Ukraine... Who are next to us. He remembers how one day the kitchen ran out of oil. And there is no money to buy, but it is necessary to cook for so many souls! At a time, for salads alone (about 15-20 kilograms of vegetables) - “prіrva oliї” is spent. And suddenly a person from local businessmen appears: “I want,” he says, “to help your children, I have my own bowl, I promise you bring it, take it. It's from the heart." Father blessed him and kissed him. He, to celebrate, then almost brought a tank of oil. Batiushka does not say that the first brick in the foundation of one of the bell towers of the monastery was laid in 2004 by the then Prime Minister of Ukraine Yanukovych. Then he came again, brought gifts for the children and a home theater. And President Yushchenko awarded him an order. It is easier for an order-bearing priest to resolve issues. Gas was extended to the shelter not without the help of Yuriy Boyko and Igor Bakai. You also need to know how to reach so high. The nuns say that “one more woman, who wanted to help the children, brought a cow, and a friend brought a share, two hectares, widdala.” On these hectares for the children's town, the nuns grow potatoes. In the grounds of the monastery, by the way, there is everything: fields, orchards, orchards, a farm, flower greenhouses. The monastery and the orphanage have enough of their products in abundance. The surplus is delivered to the surrounding social institutions free of charge. Children work on monastic farms on a par with adults.
What happens? Three-story buildings, bright windows, marble stairs, equipped with lifts for those children who find it difficult to move independently. This is a family-type orphanage. Each house is a different color. Pink, yellow, blue… Inside the parquet is covered with carpets. Not carpet, but real soft carpets. The walls are hung with paintings: nature, religious subjects. Everywhere - aquariums with fish. Birds are singing. Lots of greenery. And around the buildings - an incredible amount of flowers. Children live four to six people in a room. A sister is assigned to each room. In total, 104 people take care of children in the shelter, of which 65 are nuns, the rest are paid employees: nurses, cooks, educators. The shelter itself is like a gingerbread town. Facades of buildings, windows, entrances - everything is decorated with flowers. On the lawns - figurines of fairy-tale characters. In the backyard there is a playground and a stadium. Once, the younger children asked their father, Father Longin, for rollers. Batiushka bought roller skates for the children. Everyone. More than 200 pairs. But it turned out that there was no place to roller-skate in the village. Then the monks from Banchen came to the rescue and laid asphalt in the backyard of the orphanage. Now you can ride a bike, and roller-skate, and walk with a baby stroller there. -Is it a monastic business to entertain children? “The monastic path and the family path are very different,” Father Longin agrees. - And our shelter is separate from the monastery. But I look at my monks and see a lot of goodness in their souls. They know when their children have birthdays, buy gifts for them, even ask to visit to congratulate them. And I don't think it's bad. Heaven rejoices if someone brings joy to an orphan. A monk will not depart from his monastic life, but he must also give good to others. It's not a sin. You know, when the children lived in the monastery, it happened that people came to the service and asked where Father Longin was? And I play football with my children. Imagine what a temptation it must be for people! The abbot - and in football instead of service. So what to do? "Dad, let's play football!" - How can you refuse? I think the Lord will forgive me this sin if it is a sin. Without mercy no one will be saved. None.
What will happen? The eldest pupil, “donya”, was the first to marry four years ago to a good guy, by the way, from a neighboring village. The tables were laid, the guests were called - probably a thousand came. Or more. The whole area was walking. A year later - again a wedding: he gave out another daughter. Then more… And how many more weddings are to come, where “tato Mikhailo” will sit in a place of honor, as befits a father, and be proud of “his children”! - Axis will be calm, like the stench of a family become. I’m on a holy day before me! .. Oh, good luck! the priest says dreamily. Of course, the skeptic will say that the doctors could have made a mistake with the diagnosis of little Larisa. As in five other cases. Of course, children who have recovered from cerebral palsy, swimming in a real pool on the territory of a family home, do not prove anything. And it goes without saying that faith in the Lord and the prayers of Father Longinus, the monks and nuns of his monastery, whom the children call "mothers", the help of everyone who has been helping them for almost 20 years, has nothing to do with it. I won't argue. Then you don’t argue that Father Longin, who indiscriminately takes on feeding and raising children with “bouquets” of diseases - from cerebral palsy to AIDS with congenital hepatitis - and even if not saving them from death, then prolonging their life in care and love, - Holy man. Deal? By the age of 46, Father Longin had suffered three heart attacks and two heart surgeries. Someone is holding him on our sinful earth… Do you happen to know who? Viktor Buzyan Orthodox magazine "Loza", December, 2011 #LifeGodGift
- ... A father in some monastery in western Ukraine adopted 253 babies.
-How much? I ask my interlocutor.
"Two hundred and fifty-three," he repeats separately. “He also built houses for them, founded two monasteries and is building a shelter for the disabled. And yet he never asks anyone for anything.
At this point, my brain finally "failed". Either this is not true, or everyone should know about it. Or so: too beautiful to be true. And it's a shame if it's not true. The only way is to find out and see everything for yourself.
Banchens - where are they?
The Patriarch was ahead of me. As early as October 2 of this year, His Holiness Patriarch Kirill, during his visit to the Chernivtsi region, visited the house at the Holy Ascension Monastery in the village of Bancheny.
“This is a completely unique part of our country and the Church,” said the vicar of the Chernivtsi diocese, Bishop Meletiy of Khotyn. — The locals live in their own way, in the Romanian tradition. There are still people in the villages who do not understand the Ukrainian language, although the region has been in Ukraine for 70 years. Churches officially celebrate the service in the new style and in Romanian. There is a special blessing for this from His Holiness Patriarch Alexy I. The fact is that the Romanian Church is new-timer, therefore, when the Gertsaevsky district became the canonical territory of the Moscow Patriarchate, in order to prevent possible splits, the parishes retained the right to serve as they used to. But in the Banchen Monastery, probably the largest non-Slavic monastery in the Russian Church, they also serve in Romanian, but still in the old style.”
The monastery is headed by Archimandrite Longin. The one whom two and a half hundred children call dad. This is the truth, which is more incredible than fiction.
Monastery in the wilderness
“Our story began only 17 years ago,” says Father Amphilochius, a resident of the monastery. He speaks in a Russian-Ukrainian-Romanian mixture of languages. Almost all locals say this to visitors. Among themselves - as it is convenient for anyone to speak and understand. Such a kind of little Babylon to you. “When Father Longinus came here with the first four monks, there was a wasteland here. But the locals knew and loved the priest well - before he was tonsured, he served in the neighborhood, in the church in the village of Boyany. Therefore, when the construction of the monastery began, many helpers gathered. Those who lived in the surrounding villages came to the construction site and worked. Those who were far away helped in any way they could: with bricks, and logs, and food, and money.
 |
“So we have children, that’s why we have ponies,” Father Amphilochius, as an experienced guide, anticipates my question. - At first, the shelter was in a monastery. Father Longin took his first children back in Boyany, and they moved with him, one might say, to a construction site. When there were more children than monks, they began to think about building a separate building for them. A convenient place was found four kilometers from the monastery, in the village of Molnitsa. And in Boyany at that time, a female monastic community was formed on the basis of the parish. The sisters began to take care of the children. And so it happened that now in Bancheny there is a male monastery (it now has 86 monks), in Boyany there is a convent (it has 120 nuns), and in Molnitsa there is an orphanage. Father Longin is the confessor of both monasteries and the foster father of all the children in the orphanage.
“We need to love children!”
Longinus is a monastic name. His real name is Michael. Mikhail Vasilievich Zhar. He is only 46 years old, 20 of them has been raising orphans.
 |
“God’s,” he says so that you believe. Faith, after all, in principle, does not require any evidence. And what difference does it make who first decided to gather unwanted children, feed them, nurse them, treat them, teach them to read and write?
The story of the appearance of the first children in the monastery has already become a local legend. Longin's father (then Father Mikhail) had cows in Boyany. In the early 1990s, the time was hungry. And he began to donate milk to the local baby house. The nurses, in gratitude, decided to show the father to whom this milk goes. The conditions in which the children were shocked father Mikhail. He grabbed two babies in an armful and took them with him. This was the beginning of the "family-type orphanage", as the monastery shelter is now officially called, and the father of three children born in marriage became the father of five. Then father Mikhail adopted 27 more. And then his passport ran out of pages where children are recorded. The next 224 children he took under guardianship. Collected them all over the region. Will go somewhere on business - will definitely bring.
“I once buried a young woman,” Father Longin recalls. - It was winter. I look, after the funeral service, four boys remained at the grave. Everyone left, and they are completely frozen, in rubber boots on their bare feet and do not go anywhere. It was 20 degrees outside. And the smallest of them was still tiny. I ask: "Why don't you go home?" And they tell me: “We won’t go without mom. We have nowhere to go." Their father left them, and their mother died. “Your mom is in heaven now,” I say. “Will you come to live with me?” They nod. Well, I brought them to the monastery.
Once a newborn girl in a banana box was thrown up to the gate.
“Mom gave birth to her on New Year's Eve, threw it into a box and brought it to us. How long she lay there in the cold, I don’t know,” Father Longin says with a soft, melodious Romanian accent. - I took her in my hands, she was as cold as a stone. Completely frozen. We quickly took her to the hospital. All the doctors said there was no chance. But with God's help, the girl was saved. The doctors themselves gave her the last name Happy. And we named her Katenka.
Father met Styopka in a boarding school for disabled children. The armless boy jumped forward and read his own verses to Father Longinus. Then he followed on the heels of the priest with the mothers, and when he was about to leave, Styopa pressed his face to the cassock and asked: “Please take me away from here!” Batiushka burst into tears, hugged Styopa and took him away. Here, in the orphanage, the boy began to read books. A lot of books. Now he likes to argue. Mother Elizabeth affectionately calls him a "philosopher".
And his friend Romka is a "musician", because he plays the synthesizer, which was placed - on purpose - next to his bed. This boy has difficulty moving around. He has cerebral palsy.
But here the atmosphere is this: no one feels unhappy or unnecessary.
What else do kids need? Just to love you the way you are.
- At first we thought: well, we’ll take 50. Then - 100. Then we decided - and we’ll be able to watch 150 children, but ... Well, they, the poor, have suffered so much in their still short life that I don’t have the strength to know how it hurts, and do not take away! And when there were already 200 of them, I thought - well, that's all! But what about “everyone”?.. Now I say, probably, there will be 300.
This is Father Longin making plans for the future. His own and his children, future too.
- Yakby could hug all the orphans on earth, I would have been timid - when he is very worried, then the words in Russian and Ukrainian are mixed up. - They are weak. They must be loved. We need to love us children. And help me, so that they survived. I can't live without them! Von is my medicine. If it wasn’t for me, I would have lived in vain on earth then.
For some reason, he is not afraid to adopt children with cerebral palsy. Strange, right? Then he began to collect those whom even doctors waved their hand at: they say, they are not tenants. Yes, I'm talking about AIDS.
When AIDS recedes
There are 49 such people in the shelter today (six of them have now been diagnosed). Batiushka collected them from orphanages from all over Ukraine. “Due to” a special contingent of the priest, the statistics of “childhood AIDS” in many regions of Ukraine has decreased, and in Chernivtsi region it has increased. These are statistics, numbers, commas. What does he and all of us care about her, right?
 |
How did children with a terrible diagnosis end up in the orphanage?
Very simple. In the baby house, Father Longin saw a beautiful girl. Her mother refused her because her daughter was HIV-infected. The nurses also shied away from her. In the patriarchal Western Ukrainian society, the words "AIDS" and "death" are somewhere close.
“When I saw her, it hurt me a lot,” recalls the priest. - She looked at me so sadly, and I was afraid to touch her, so as not to bring an infection to my children.
I think that Father Longin did not sleep that night, remembering this two-month-old girl. And in the morning I asked the brothers in the monastery to furnish the room as best as possible, put an elegant bed there, because a child, a girl, would live here.
Little Larisa - that was her name - was baptized, now she is Philatea. Here, in the shelter, the girl underwent a course of retroviral therapy. Doctors were very surprised when they recently saw her tests: there are no traces of HIV infection in her blood. Now Philateya lives with the rest of the children, she has moved to the fifth grade.
How it's done?
Father Longinus is idolized in Banchen. He gives people hope. Live like people. And not only by raising children.
 |
The gas "branch" to the shelter was thrown across the Prut River. At the same time, the village got it.
“I know you are not asking for help. Fundamentally,” I say to Father Mikhail. But how is it that you and your children have everything?
“I think it is the Lord himself who puts it on the hearts of those who want to do good. There are a lot of good people in Ukraine... Who are next to us.
He remembers how one day the kitchen ran out of oil. And there is no money to buy, but it is necessary to cook for so many souls! At a time, for salads alone (about 15-20 kilograms of vegetables) - "prіrva oliї" is spent.
And suddenly some person from local businessmen appears: “I want,” he says, “to help your children, I have my own bowl, I promise you bring it, take it. It's from the heart."
Father blessed him and kissed him. He, to celebrate, then almost brought a tank of oil.
Batiushka does not say that the first brick in the foundation of one of the bell towers of the monastery was laid in 2004 by the then Prime Minister of Ukraine Yanukovych. Then he came again, brought gifts for the children and a home theater. And President Yushchenko awarded him an order. It is easier for an order-bearing priest to resolve issues. Gas was extended to the shelter not without the help of Yuriy Boyko and Igor Bakai. You also need to know how to reach so high.
The nuns say that “one more woman, who wanted to help the children, brought a cow, and a friend - take a share, two hectares, widdala.”
On these hectares for the children's town, the nuns grow potatoes.
In the grounds of the monastery, by the way, there is everything: fields, orchards, orchards, a farm, flower greenhouses. The monastery and the orphanage have enough of their products in abundance. The surplus is delivered to the surrounding social institutions free of charge. Children work on monastic farms on a par with adults.
What happens?
Three-story buildings, bright windows, marble stairs, equipped with lifts for those children who find it difficult to move independently. This is a family-type orphanage. Each house is a different color. Pink, yellow, blue…
Inside the parquet is covered with carpets. Not carpet, but real soft carpets.
The walls are hung with paintings: nature, religious subjects. Everywhere - aquariums with fish. Birds are singing. Lots of greenery. And around the buildings - an incredible amount of flowers.
Children live four to six people in a room. A sister is assigned to each room. In total, 104 people take care of children in the shelter, of which 65 are nuns, the rest are paid employees: nurses, cooks, educators. The shelter itself is like a gingerbread town. Facades of buildings, windows, porches - everything is decorated with flowers. On the lawns - figurines of fairy-tale characters. In the backyard there is a playground and a stadium. Once, the younger children asked their father, Father Longin, for rollers. Batiushka bought roller skates for the children. Everyone. More than 200 pairs. But it turned out that there was no place to roller-skate in the village. Then the monks from Banchen came to the rescue and laid asphalt in the backyard of the orphanage. Now you can ride a bike, and roller-skate, and walk with a baby stroller there.
Is it a monastic business to entertain children?
“The monastic path and the family path are very different,” Father Longin agrees. “And our shelter is separate from the monastery. But I look at my monks and see a lot of goodness in their souls. They know when their children have birthdays, buy gifts for them, even ask to visit to congratulate them. And I don't think it's bad. Heaven rejoices if someone brings joy to an orphan. A monk will not depart from his monastic life, but he must also give good to others. It's not a sin. You know, when the children lived in the monastery, it happened that people came to the service and asked where Father Longin was? And I play football with my children. Imagine what a temptation it must be for people! Rector - and in football instead of service. So what to do? "Dad, let's play football!" - How can you refuse? I think the Lord will forgive me this sin if it is a sin. Without mercy no one will be saved. None.
What will happen?
The eldest pupil, “donya”, was the first to marry four years ago to a good guy, by the way, from a neighboring village. The tables were laid, the guests were called - probably a thousand came. Or more. The whole area was walking.
A year later - again a wedding: he gave out another daughter. Then more...
And how many more weddings are to come, where “tato Mikhailo” will sit in a place of honor, as befits a father, and be proud of “his children”!
- I'll be calm then, as if the stench of the family will become. I’m on a holy day before me! .. Oh, good luck! the priest says dreamily.
Of course, the skeptic will say that the doctors could have made a mistake with the diagnosis of little Larisa. As in five other cases. Of course, children who have recovered from cerebral palsy, swimming in a real pool on the territory of a family home, do not prove anything. And it goes without saying that faith in the Lord and the prayers of Father Longinus, the monks and nuns of his monastery, whom the children call "mothers", the help of everyone who has been helping them for almost 20 years, has nothing to do with it. I won't argue. Then you don’t argue that Father Longin, who indiscriminately takes on feeding and raising children with “bouquets” of diseases - from cerebral palsy to AIDS with congenital hepatitis - and even if not saving them from death, then prolonging their lives in care and love, - Holy man. Deal?
By the age of 46, Father Longin had suffered three heart attacks and two heart surgeries. Someone is holding him on our sinful earth… Do you happen to know who?