NEWS FROM THE DIOCESES
 
DIOCESE OF EASTERN AMERICA AND NEW YORK: November 10, 2004

Protopriest Nikolai Nekliudoff Reposes

On Sunday, October 17, at the age of 84, Protopriest Nikolai Nekliudoff of the Eastern American Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, died.

The future Fr Nikolai received his primary education in German schools in the Baltics and completed pastoral courses in Munich, where he read and sang a great deal on the kliros. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1962, and since November 1963 was the Rector of Holy Protection Church in "Novaya Kuban," where, thanks to his sole efforts, a stone church was built in the style of Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanvile. A cemetery was established there, a church house, a bell-tower with five bells acquired from Rhodesia (Africa), where particularly melodious bells were made. After many sorrows and troubles in the early years of his service at this parish, he raised it to a high level and established peaceful parish life there, for which the Synod of Bishops elevated him, through the intercession of Archbishop Nikon (Rklitzky, +1976), to the rank of protopriest in 1975.

Fr Nikolai loved to serve, often and according to the ustav [rule]. Over the last several years, because of his health, he was no longer able to serve. His funeral was performed in the church he built by the clergymen of the Third Deanery of the Eastern American Diocese, headed by Protopresbyter Valery Lukianov.