Cleveland Monastery Abbot Resigns Following Discovery of Weapons

Abbot John (Henry), the superior of a Ukrainian Orthodox monastery and house of mercy in Cleveland, Ohio, has resigned his abbacy and oversight of the house of mercy after investigators found 230 guns and 2,000 rounds of ammunition on Monastery property in the Cleveland area. More on that here.

My only personal experience with Fr. John came from a weekend retreat sponsored by a Chicagoland parish of the Kiev Patriarchate, at which Fr. John was the main speaker. I spent most of the weekend trying to figure out what was Orthodox about standing in a circle holding hands or advocating being "slain in the Spirit," but I spent the rest of the time wondering how on earth either the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA or the Kiev Patriarchate could be so lax in their clergy standards that they could allow such men to become parish priests, much less the abbots of monasteries...

The above aside, St. Herman's House of Mercy (attached to Fr. John's St. Herman's Monastery) has done a tremendous amount of good in Cleveland. That shall continue under the supervision of an interim administrative committee, but it's to be hoped that both the Monastery and its house of mercy will somehow survive this and grow from it.