SYDNEY: December 3, 2010
The Secretary of the Kazakhstan Metropoliate Visits the Diocese of Australia and New Zealand

On October 18-26, 2010, with the blessing of His Eminence Metropolitan Alexander of Astanai and Kazakhstan and His Eminence Metropolitan Hilarion of Eastern America and New York, the Secretary of the Kazakhstan Metropoliate, Protopriest Alexander Suvorov, visited Sydney, Australia. 

Fr Alexander participated in the 50th-anniversary celebrations of a remarkable couple: Vladimir and Sophia Boikov, a family which reared several clergymen. They managed to gather a large Orthodox community around themselves in which the Orthodox faith was preserved, along with the Russian language and culture. During his trip, Fr Alexander related to the Orthodox Christians of Australia the stories of the podvigi of a host of saints who ascended their own Golgotha on the lands of Kazakhstan. This is a germane topic for many Australians, many of whose ancestors were crowned with the halo of martyrdom for Christ. 

On the 26th week of Pentecost, on the feast day of Archangel Michael, Fr Alexander concelebrated Divine Liturgy in the Church of the Protection of the Most-Holy Mother of God in Cabramatta, a suburb of Sydney. After Liturgy, Fr Alexander read a sermon in which he told the parishioners about the saints of Kazakhstan, after which each parishioner received an icon of the Kazakhstan martyrs. With the blessing of Metropolitan Alexander, the icon-painting studio at Resurrection Cathedral in Almaty prepared an icon of Holy Hieromartyr Nikolai of Almaty containing a portion of his relics, which was given to the Rector of the Church of the Resurrection of Christ in Auckland, New Zealand, Protopriest Vladimir Boikov. The Rector of the Church of the Protection, Protopriest Boris Ignatievsky, was given an icon of the Kazakhstan martyrs.

On November 26, Fr Alexander returned to Almaty.