Edinburgh, July 23, 2024.
On Sunday, July 7, 2024, Bishop Athanasius of Bogdan, Vicar General of the Italian Diocese of the Romanian Orthodox Church, performed the rite of consecration of the church of the monastery in honor of all Celtic saints in the parish of Kilninian on the Isle of Mull, west of the coast of Scotland. This is the first Orthodox monastery to be founded on Scottish soil in over 1000 years!
Archbishop Benjamin of San Francisco and Western America (Orthodox Church in America) also prayed at the service, which was held with the blessing of Metropolitan Joseph of Western and Southern Europe.
This church, built on the site of an ancient monastery of the first millennium, was given to the Romanian Orthodox Archdiocese of Western Europe in 2009.
"Today is a special day, for we are reviving the a gracious place where the first Celtic monks dedicated their lives to serving God and their neighbors... Monasticism is a great mystery, because monks are those who gather the grief and pain, helplessness and sinfulness of the whole world, immersing it all in deep prayer, transforming and renewing it with saving grace," Bishop Athanasius noted.
"This is a miracle: you gather pain and bring grace, you gather sorrow and bring joy. Every monastic has a 'bag of stars' from which they scatter everywhere this seed of grace - 'stars' that bring light and grace to the world..... The miracle lies precisely in the prayers of the Celtic saints we honor today. These are the men who for centuries knew how to plant the seed of Christianity in the blessed soil of Britain, giving their lives like a grain of wheat which, when it falls into the ground, bears much fruit, but only after it dies, because otherwise it cannot bear fruit... Death giving life is what the monks were doing; they were dying before death, so that they would never die again, but abide forever in the Lord Jesus," the bishop added.
The large island of Mull, one of the Inner Hebrides, has an area of 875 square kilometers. It is separated from the west coast of Scotland by the Channel of Mull and is administratively part of the county of Argyll and Bute. Since time immemorial there has been a healing spring on this island in honor of St. Ninian (+ c. 430), the great educator of the southwestern Picts of Scotland. In the VI century an Orthodox monastery in honor of St. Ninian was founded on the west of the Isle of Mull (since then the place has been called Kilninian, i.e. "Church of Ninian"), and monastic life continued here until the invasion of the pagan Vikings at the end of the first millennium AD. During the Scandinavian domination only ruins remained of the monastery, and in the 1750s on the site of the former monastery was built a Presbyterian church in honor of Saints Ninian and Cuthbert, which closed in the XX century, and in the early XXI century Romanian hieromonk Serafim (Aldea), the founder of the monastery in honor of all Celtic (i.e. Irish, Scottish, Welsh and Breton) saints, purchased the building of this church - now it is used for services.
The monastery itself is under the jurisdiction of the Romanian Patriarchate. It consists of two communities: a community of nuns lives on the island of Mull, and a small group of monks on the nearby island of Iona, where in 563 the greatest Celtic saint Columba founded his monastery a famous monastery that became a center of contemplative prayer, ascetic life, missionary work, culture and scholarship for many years. The nuns and nuns of the Monastery of All Celtic Saints are mostly Romanians, Britons, Americans and Canadians. The services are conducted in English. The place is visited by numerous visitors and pilgrims. There are also pilgrimage trips to neighboring islands where saints lived in the first millennium, such as the island of Inchkenneth, where the monastery founded by St. Kenneth flourished since the VI century.
Sources: https://basilica.ro/
