He became the top student in the school and then in the seminary, which enabled him to enter the Theological Academy in Saint Petersburg, the Russian capital.

Benjamin (Fedchenkov) (1880—1961) writes that after the marriage, he surprisingly refused to have sexual relations with his wife, despite her complaints to the church authorities.

His biographer Nadieszda Kizenko notes that some aspects of John's behaviour were reminiscent of the practices of Protestants and others of the Khlysts.

[17] John was widely venerated as a saint even during his lifetime because of his fame as a powerful prayer, healer, and visionary.

It had its own church, an elementary school for boys and girls, an orphanage, a hospital for anyone who came there, a boarding house, a free public library, shelter for the homeless that accommodated 40,000 people each year, a variety of workshops in which the impoverished could earn some money, a cheap public canteen that served about 800 free dinners on holidays and a hostel for the travelers.

He practiced mass confessions during which thousands of people wiped out their sins and went into a frenzy, which was often accompanied by hysterics and tears.

[19] John came to a wide prominence after the publication of an open letter in the newspaper Novoe Vremya (literally New Time) in 1883.

In the open letter, 16 people told about their healing thanks to the prayers of John and swore, "Now live according to God's truth and go to Holy Communion as often as possible".

The situation was discussed by the highest church organ, the Most Holy Synod, whose hierarchs were in disarray, and Metropolitan Isidore, John's direct supervisor, was especially dissatisfied.

[31] His support of far-right movements and such aggressive attacks on Tolstoy led to the fact that the attitude of the "progressives" in society towards John became negative, and his figure became the personification of "Reactionary" forces.

The Ioannites believed that the world as they knew it was about to end, probably after the revolution, and that they could find salvation only by going to God in the person of John.

In 1923 to 1926, when the Ioannovsky Convent began to be closed, the option of reburial in one of the cemeteries was discussed, but the idea met resistance from Soviet authorities, who feared that the new grave would become another place of veneration.

[36] The book of the Soviet historian of religion Nikolai Yudin[37] claimed that a coffin with the bones of John was taken far out of city and burned.

[40] The official website of the John Convent claims that the relics continue to be in the crypt, but there have been no excavations that could prove it.

[43] A well-known conservative ideologist of the ROCOR, Archimandrite Constantine (Zaitsev) believed that the most powerful heavenly patrons of Russia were John and Nicholas II with his family.

[44] In 1990, after the beginning of perestroika and the liberalization of church life in the Soviet Union, John was canonized by the Moscow Patriarchate.

In 2014, Vitaly Milonov proposed to establish 14 June as a memorial day for John in Saint Petersburg.

But the Federation of Jewish Communities of the CIS was absolutely opposed and made an official statement: "John of Kronstadt was a member of the odious Black-Hundred organization Union of the Russian People, known for its terrible anti-Semitism and moral support for Jewish pogroms in pre-revolutionary Russia"[47][48] Icons of John most commonly portray him holding a Communion chalice because he reawakened the Russian Orthodox Church to the apostolic tradition of receiving Holy Communion every Divine Liturgy.