« Marina Fennell (Lopukhina), the oldest parishioner of the church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker in Oxford, reposed in the Lord »

On February 1, 2021, the oldest parishioner of the Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker in the city of Oxford, Marina Nikolaevna Fennell (Lopukhina), reposed in the Lord.

The funeral service will take place on February 9, after the Divine Liturgy, in the church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, located at 34 Ferry Rd, Marston, Oxford OX3 0EU.

The divine Liturgy will start at 9:30, the funeral service - at 11:00, and the burial at the Wolvercote cemetery - at 12:30.

Below we publish an article about the life path of Marina Nikolaevna Fennell (Lopukhina), written by her son Nicholas Fennell.

Marina Nikolaevna Lopukhin was born in Harbin, Manchuria, on 8 June 1925. Her mother was Sophia Mikhaylovna, daughter of Archpriest Mikhail Osorgin the former governor of Tula; her father, Nikolay Sergeevich, fought in the Russo-Japanese War, and served as a justice of the peace and court councillor. Having spent ten years in Harbin, the Lopukhins emigrated in 1930 via the USA to Clamart on the outskirts of Paris. In the French capital Marina was a close friend of Andrey Bloom, the future Metropolitan Antony of Surozh, and Archimandrite Kiprian (Kern) was her spiritual father. During the German occupation Marina worked as an assistante sociale. Shortly after the end of the war she met her future husband, John Fennell, a recently demobbed British Army officer. After their wedding in 1948 the newly-weds moved to Cambridge, where John was a Slavonic Faculty lecturer and wrote on Russian history. The Fennells continued their friendship with Fr Antony (Bloom), who became their father-confessor. Their son, Nicholas, was born in 1949, and their daughter, Juliana, in 1951; Fr Antony baptized them. They moved to Oxford in 1956 where John was Professor of Russian 1968–1987.

After John’s death in 1992 Marina played a more active part in church life, first in the Russian parish of the Annunciation, 1 Canterbury Rd, and then in St Nicholas the Wonderworker parish, Oxford. Her spiritual father was now the eminent theologian, Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia. In the last twenty years of her life, like her sister, Princess Elizaveta Obolensky, Marina was wholly devoted to the church: she gave generously to the parish and went to every service as long as she was able to do so. Marina particularly loved the rector, Archpriest Stephen (Platt) and Matushka Anna. This love was mutual. For the last two years of her life Fr Stephen and his parishioners constantly visited, fed and looked after her. In the last twelve days of her life they never left her bedside. On the day of her death, Tuesday 1 February 2021, she was gravely ill. Fr Stephan gave her Communion; she immediately calmed down and peacefully surrendered her life to the Lord.