« A moleben was served in Oxford at the reliquary with the relics of the Saints of the British and Irish lands »

On Sunday, June 29, 2025, the Orthodox Church celebrates the day of remembrance of All Saints who shone forth in the land of Britain and Ireland.

After the Divine Liturgy in the Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker in Oxford, a group of parishioners, together with pilgrims from various parishes of the Sourozh Diocese who joined them, went to the Catholic Oratory Church of St Aloysius, where the Rector of the St Nicholas church, Dean of the diocesan district of Central England, Archpriest Stephen Platt, served a moleben before the reliquary with the relics of the British and Irish saints of the undivided Church.

In the oratory, the pilgrims were warmly greeted by the provost Rev. Nicholas Edmonds-Smith. 

After the moleben, the Orthodox pilgrims visited one of the chapels, where numerous particles of the relics of selected ancient saints who laboured in the British Isles are kept in reliquaries.

The initiator of the inclusion of the Saints of the undivided Church in the British Isles in the liturgical circle of the Russian Orthodox Church is Metropolitan Anthony (Bloom), who became the first hierarch to place the icon of the "Synaxis of British and Irish Saints" in the cathedral church of the Sourozh Diocese.

On the initiative of the Diocesan Assembly of the Sourozh Diocese on 3 March 2007, the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church blessed the establishment of the Day of the Cathedral Remembrance of the Saints who shone forth in the lands of Britain and Ireland on the third Sunday after Pentecost (Journal No. 49 of the meeting of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church on 21 August 2007).

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