St John Maximovitch arriving in America, 1949

In 1934, St John Maximovitch was ordained ROCOR bishop of Shanghai and sent to shepherd the Russian exiles in China. Even before his episcopal ordination, when St John was teaching at the Bitol seminary in Serbia, the great Serbian bishop Nicholai Velimirovich famously said, “If you desire to see a living Saint, go to Bitol to Father John.” By the time St John was ordained a bishop at the age of thirty-eight, he had long since given up sleeping in a bed, taking on the unusual ascetic challenge of avoiding all but the most necessary sleep. He always looked a bit awkward and disheveled, and he had a speech impediment – all of these things covering up the fact that he was extraordinarily well-educated, a lawyer and theologian with one of the most brilliant minds in the Orthodox Church, and also a wonderworking saint.

The Japanese invaded Shanghai in 1937, and from that point on, the position of the Russian Orthodox went from bad to worse to worse. St John was fearless in the face of danger; here is one example from Marina Shakhmatova, who ran the orphanage St John set up in Shanghai; the story is passed on by Fr Herman Podmoshensky:

In the slums of Shanghai, there were cases in which dogs would devour baby girls who had been thrown into garbage cans. When the newspapers announced this, Archbishop John told Mrs. Shakhmatova to go and buy two bottles of Chinese vodka-at which she cringed in horror. But her horror increased when he demanded that she accompany him into these very slums, where it was common knowledge that grown-up people would be murdered. Fearless as ever, the young Bishop insisted on going there, walking through dark alleys in the worst neighborhood. She recalled what horror seized her heart when they, in the darkness of night, walked and encountered only drunkards, shady characters, and growling dogs and cats. She held the bottles in her hands, following him with trepidation, when suddenly a growl was heard from a drunken man sitting in a dark doorway and the faint moan of a baby was heard from a nearby garbage can. When the Bishop hastened towards the cry, the drunkard growled in warning. Then the Bishop turned to Mrs. Shakhmatova and said, “Hand me a bottle.” Raising the bottle in one hand and pointing to the garbage can with the other, Blessed John, without words, conveyed the message of the proposed sale. The bottle ended up in the hands of the drunkard, and Mrs. Shakhmatova saved the child. They say that that night he returned to the orphanage with two babies under his arms. This fearlessness, however, had not been acquired without a deep inner struggle.

The heavy-handed Japanese rule gave way to the Communists and the situation in Shanghai became completely untenable. St John had to get his people out of China. While the American, Turkish, and Greek governments were coordinating on the election of Athenagoras Spyrou as Ecumenical Patriarch, St John was lobbying foreign governments on behalf of his flock. Athenagoras was enthroned in Istanbul in January 1949; the same month, the Shanghai exodus to the Philippine island of Tubabao began. St John himself only visited the island for a couple of months before heading off to America, to lobby for his people to be admitted into the United States.

Senator William Knowland of California

This led to the remarkable appearance of a god in the halls of the United States Congress. On September 6, 1949, St John arrived in Washington, DC, and began to meet with U.S. congressmen and government officials. St John and his translator were invited to testify before a Senate subcommittee that was considering a bill that would allow the Russian refugees entry into the U.S. St John wrote at the time, “Today is a very important day in our case. A meeting of the Senate Judiciary Committee just ended, at which the Bill is being considered, and where I was invited to attend together with Nikolai Nikolaevich Alexandrov. N.N. Alexandrov had prepared a very impressive report… After Senator Knowland’s report was made, I was questioned in every detail regarding the Russian colony of Shanghai from 1920 up to today, the number of refugees in Tubabao, and other information.”

But the bill faced opposition, and for months, it was stalled. President Truman supported the bill, but a bloc of senators were against it. St John continued his lobbying efforts, making additional trips to D.C. Finally, on Holy Thursday, 1950, the bill passed the Senate; the House of Representatives followed suit, and Truman signed it into law on June 16. St John was particularly grateful for the efforts of Senator William Knowland of California, writing, “Senator Knowland was our best helper in the Senate… He conducted the last session like a guard standing at his post.”

As he was now without an episcopal see, St John was reassigned by the ROCOR Synod of Bishops to be the bishop of Western Europe. (For a lot more on St John and the Shanghai refugees, see John Dunlop’s book Exodus: St John Maximovitch Leads his Flock out of Shanghai.) St John was in Europe from 1952-62, after which he was transferred to San Francisco and reunited with many of his Shanghai parishioners.