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Diocesan Collection for the reinterment of the ever-memorable Bishop Constantine (Jesensky, +1996) - 24/10/2014

Emmanuel Jesensky, the future Bishop Constantine, was born in 1907 in Saint Petersburg, where his father, a nobleman, worked in the Imperial Chancery. Taken prisoner in 1918, his father was executed by the Bolsheviks. His mother, on receiving this news, died of a heart attack, leaving eleven-year-old Emmanuel an orphan. Moving to be with his surviving family to Riga, Latvia, he finished school and worked in a pharmacy. At the same time he studied iconography under the masterful Old Rite iconographer, Pimen Sofronov. In 1928 New Martyr Archbishop John of Riga blessed him to enter seminary. He graduated in 1930 and went to Paris, where he undertook postgraduate theological studies. In 1932 he was ordained to the priesthood and sent to Berlin, serving in parishes in Germany until 1949, when he emigrated to the United States and served in parishes of the Eastern American Diocese. In October 1967 he was tonsured a monk and given the name Constantine, and in December 1967 he was consecrated Bishop of Brisbane, Vicar of the Australian and New Zealand Diocese. A deeply spiritual man who loved the beauty of God's house and the Divine Services, he served in Australia from 1967 until 1978 and then in the Eastern American Diocese and the Great Britain until his retirement in 1985. From 1991 he lived at a monastery in Texas where he reposed and was buried. Sadly, the monastery was later closed, and the property passed from the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church outside Russia. For many years the Synod of Bishops has endeavoured to have Bishop Constantine’s remains transferred from Texas to the Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, New York. This has now become possible, and the parishes of our Diocese have been asked to assist in this good work. Those amongst the faithful who wish to help may obtain more information from the parish rector.

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