500 Pilgrims Attend Feast Day Celebrations at Ellwood City Monastery

Western Pennsylvania's Monastery of the Transfiguration marked its feast day again this year with its annual pilgrimage. The festal divine services were celebrated by Archbishop Nathaniel (Popp) of the Romanian Orthodox Episcopate in America (ROEA) and Bishops Melchisedek (Pleska) of Pittsburgh, Michael (Dahulich) of New York, and twenty-two other clergymen serving in the American Orthodox Church, the American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese, the Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese of North America, the Bulgarian Orthodox Diocese of Toledo, and the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. More on the pilgrimage, which drew some five hundred faithful from through the United States and eastern Canada, can be found here.

Holy Transfiguration Monastery was founded under the ROEA by Mother Alexandra (Issarescu), a member of the Romanian royal family, to provide a home for English-speaking women desiring to live the angelic life. Mother Alexandra's vision has largely been fulfilled as most of the sisterhood's members today are native to North America and, again for the most part, converts. The Ellwood City Monastery is also mother to Holy Dormition Monastery in Rives Junction, Michigan, which was founded by Holy Transfiguration's second abbess.