Saints of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church

First-Fruits of Missionary Outreach

As we have seen, the Ukrainian Church began its missionary outreach to the Far East with St Theodore of Smolensk who married the Khan’s daughter which event helped open the doors of Asia to Orthodoxy.  This was followed by the pioneering work of the Ukrainian missionaries to the Orient, especially St John Maximovitch, Metropolitan of Siberia and St John Maximovitch II, Archbishop of Shanghai.  In 1900, several hundred Chinese Orthodox Christians were martyred during the Boxer Rebellion and have since been Glorified as Saints and Martyrs by the Orthodox Church.  This group of Martyrs is headed by St Mitrophan the Hieromartyr, first Chinese Orthodox priest, ordained by St Nicholas of Japan who worked in the tradition of the Ukrainian St Innocent of Irkutsk, his wife, St Tatiana (Tanya), St Ia the Teacher and many others.  These Chinese Orthodox Martyrs are the first-fruits of Orthodoxy, planted in China by the Ukrainian Church of Kyiv.  They therefore, by right, also belong to Kyiv.