Activities of the metropolitan of Leningrad and Novgorod Nicodim (Rotov) for saving the Russian Athos

Te metropolitan Nicodim (Rotov) has made a huge contribution to save the Russian Athos. In February 1959 he became the first priest of Russian Orthodox Church who has arrived from the USSR to Athos with the pilgrim purpose. In June 1963 the archbishop Nicodim headed the Moscow Patriarchate’s delegation at celebration of the millennium of monkhood on Mount Athos. And already soon he has achieved the admission of monks from the Moscow Patriarchate in strongly reduced brotherhood of the Russian Saint Panteleimon’s monastery on Athos, having saved, thus, the monastery from inevitable and fast extinction. The death of the metropolitan Nicodim became bereavement for the Russian Athos and at once has affected the possibility of arrival of new monks from the Moscow Patriarchate on the Holy Mountain. The situation has again improved only in the late eighties, thanks to the general and cardinal change of circumstances in the conditions of gradually accruing collapse of the USSR. That's why the major role was played by the Metropolitan of Leningrad and Novgorod Nicodim in remaining the Saint Panteleimon’s monastery as Russian one