Russian Old Rite Orthodox Church (Lidcombe, New South Wales)

Russian Old Rite Orthodox Church. Lidcombe, New South Wales

The Russian Old Rite Orthodox Church of the Holy Annunciation and the Assumption is an Old Believer church at 58 Vaughan Street, Lidcombe, in Sydney, New South Wales. In Russian it is usually called the Church of the Dormition (Assumption) of the Most Holy Theotokos (Храм Успения Пресвятой Богородицы). Its parish, the Dormition (Uspenskaya) Old Believer community of Sydney, belongs to the Lipovan Orthodox Old-Rite Church, the Old-Rite Metropolis of Belaya Krinitsa, whose metropolitan resides in Brăila, Romania.

History

From China to Sydney

The parish was founded by Old Believers who came to Australia from China. A first group arrived from Harbin in 1958 with Fr Ioann Kudrin, and the main group came from the Three Rivers region (Trekhrechye) of Manchuria in 1962 and early 1963.

When the Three Rivers group arrived, Old Believers in Sydney were meeting in three groups led by the Kudrin brothers. The newcomers joined the group of Aleksandr Ivanovich Kudrin, which met in rented premises in Lakemba. As it grew, its 35 to 40 families, most of them large, raised money to build a church. They bought a block with an old house in Vaughan Street, Lidcombe, built a church there, and began worshipping in it in 1967.

A separate Old Believer parish in Auburn, founded by Fr Ioann Kudrin in 1958, now belongs to the Russian Orthodox Old-Rite Church in Moscow.

Clergy and bishops

The community's first priest in Sydney was Fr Ioann Starosadchev, who had served it in Three Rivers. He came from Canada, at first on temporary visas, and later settled in Sydney for the last years of his life. After his death the community, which had already belonged to the Belaya Krinitsa metropolis in China, contacted the metropolis and was asked to send a candidate for the priesthood. Timofei Evseevich Ovchinnikov was chosen by lot from three candidates, trained at the metropolis for six months, and returned as the parish's priest in 1975.

The community then sought a bishop. Illarion Fakeevich Basargin, a former priestless Old Believer, was consecrated at the metropolis with the name Iosif. When illness prevented him from serving, Bishop Iustin was sent temporarily, and after Bishop Iosif's death Bishop Sofroniy was consecrated for the community.

A smaller Sydney group was led by Fr Kirill Ivanov, a priest who had come from the Soviet Union. Before his death he asked his flock to join Fr Timofei's parish, and most of them did. In the 1980s Fr Pyotr Peresypkin was ordained. He was chairman of the community for several years and later became priest of the Old Believer parish in Dandenong, Melbourne.

The present church (2000)

When the first church became too small, a larger church was built on its site in less than a year and completed in 2000. Other Old Believer parishes helped, as did some individual members of other Orthodox churches. The interior was painted mainly by Bishop Sofroniy, with the Romanian iconographer Stefan.

Parish life

Besides the church, the parish has a school and a refectory. The school, which has run since the community's arrival in Australia, teaches Russian language, history and literature, and separately Church Slavonic reading, chant and the church typikon. For eleven years the parish published a journal, Tserkov (The Church). Pavel Shakhmatov estimated the parish's membership at up to 500 people, more than a hundred families, and said that Fr Timofei and the community had helped establish Old Believer parishes in Oregon and Alaska.

Visitors to Old Believer churches are expected to dress modestly. Men do not wear ties, short sleeves, jeans or sportswear to church. Women wear modest, loose-fitting clothes with long sleeves, and cover their hair with a headscarf.

See also

• Old Believers
• Lipovan Orthodox Old-Rite Church
• Russian Orthodox Old-Rite Church
• Orthodoxy in Australia