interwiki, renameuser, Administrators
13,552
edits
Changes
m
no edit summary
In 1939, trudnik Rostislav was [[tonsure]]d to the rassophore with the name Vitaly, and a year later, he was tonsured to the minor schema.
In 1941, in the city of Bratislava, Fr Vitaly was [[ordination|ordained]] by [[Metropolitan]] Seraphim of Berlin and Germany to the rank of hiero[[monkhieromonk]] and assigned to minister to two towns on the Polish border.
World War II forced the [[monasticism|monastic]] brotherhood to flee from the approaching Red Army. Fr Vitaly found himself in Berlin, where, together with [[Archimandrite]] Nathaniel, he developed a broad mission among the Russian refugees and prisoners of war. The second onslaught of the Reds forced the two young [[clergy]]men to move to Hamburg, where another field of activity opened up for them: to save thousands of refugees from forced repatriation to the USSR. A good knowledge of various languages, especially of English, along with tireless energy, allowed Fr Vitaly and Fr Nathaniel to save the lives of many Russians.
