This Day in the Life of the Church

August 6, 2023

A Priest and Teacher with a Big Russian Heart

Archpriest George Skrinnikov, Instructor of Holy Trinity Orthodox Seminary, passed away today in 2008. He was born in Yugoslavia before World War II into a family of White Russian refugees. After the Second World War, Fr. George came to Argentina and then to Canada, where he served in many ROCOR parishes. In 1990, when I came to the seminary in Jordanville, there was an influx of entrants from the Soviet Union. We were penniless, without family in America, and had to adapt to the culture. Fr. George taught us the Law of God and was very caring and cheerful. At the same time, he rejected the reunification of the ROCOR with the Moscow Patriarchate in 2007; his brother-in-law, Archimandrite Sergii (Kindiakoff), became a bishop under Metropolitan Vitaly, who split away from the ROCOR in 2001.

The mythrstreaming Iveron icon of the Mother of God visits the Pokrov parish in Ottawa, where Fr. George served. 1986. Photo: http://www.memorialchurch.ca

A Person Who Contributed to the ROCOR’s Liturgical Reputation

Church composer Boris Ledkovsky passed away on this day in 1965. He grew up in a priest’s family and studied church music from his early youth in the Don region and in Moscow. Having left Russia with General Wrangel’s Russian Army in 1920, for a while, Ledkosvky sang in the Don Cossack Choir of the famed Sergei Zharov. During World War II, he was a choir director in Berlin. After the war, he became the choir director at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Sign (home to the ROCOR Synod). While Ledkovsky was part of the ROCOR rather than the North American Metropolia (now the OCA), he was nevertheless able to teach at St. Vladimir’s Seminary, which at the time was located on Manhattan’s West Side. He belongs to a pleiad of ROCOR liturgical scholars along with Bishop Gabriel (Chepur), John Gardner, and Valeria Hoecke.

The Exapostilarion of Pascha "In Flesh Thou Didst Fall Asleep"(In Church-Slavonic). Music by Boris Ledkovsky

Boris Ledkovsy (in the second row at the very left) and the faculty of St. Vladimir's Seminary in 1958. Photo: www. svots.edu

Source:
Синодик РПЦЗ. Архиерейский Синод РПЦЗ : [официальный сайт]. URL: sinod.ruschurchabroad.org/bib-sinodik.html

Copyright 2023 Andrei Psarev.

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