His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Rus' awarded the oldest resident of the Iveron-Seraphim Monastery in Almaty, Schema-Nun Irina (Lyubitskaya), the Order of the Equal-to-the-Apostles Princess Olga on the 100th anniversary of her birth

April 18, 2025 marks the 100th birth anniversary of the oldest resident of the Iveron-Seraphim Convent in Almaty, veteran of the Great Patriotic War, Schema-Nun Irina (Lyubitskaya).

In recognition of her merits and labors for the good of the Orthodox Church, in connection with the centenary of her birth and the 80th anniversary of the Victory, His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Rus' awarded Mother Irina the highest female award of the Russian Orthodox Church - the Order of the Equal-to-the-Apostles Princess Olga 1st degree.

Schema-nun Irina was born in the Orenburg region, in the village of Besedeno on April 18, 1925.

From the first days of the Great Patriotic War, she worked for the coming Victory in the rear. From 1942 to 1945, she worked in evacuation hospitals opened in Tajikistan to accommodate soldiers wounded in battle, in the evenings she studied at a medical college in the paramedic department. For her selfless work for the good of the Motherland during the hard times of war, she was awarded the title of "Home Front Worker". In 1947-1981, she worked as a paramedic in an ambulance in the city of Alma-Ata.

In 1948, soon after the appointment of the confessor of faith Bishop Nikolai (Mogilevsky) to the archpastoral cathedra in Alma-Ata, she began to work as a singer in the left choir of the St. Nicholas Cathedral in Alma-Ata. On August 23, 1952, with the blessing of Metropolitan Nikolai, Archimandrite Isaac (Vinogradov), an outstanding church figure of the mid-20th century, tonsured her into monasticism. Until 1981, nun Irina carried out various obediences in the Alma-Ata diocesan administration, combining this with work in the hospital; for many years (more than 60 years) she worked as a singer in the choir. With the revival of the Iversky-Seraphimovsky Monastery in the southern capital of Kazakhstan, she became its inhabitant in 2009. On April 12, 2011, she took the Great Schema.