Alexis Naumov

Holy Hieromartyr Alexis Naumov, a priest, was born on 6 February 1876 and served at the works church in the village of Ochyor, in the Okhansk district of the Perm province. He was shot by Red soldiers on 4 September 1918, in the village of Sepychi, after cruel torture and mockery. The Jubilee Council of Bishops in 2000 numbered him among the holy martyrs.

He was baptised the day after his birth, on 7 February, in the church of Saints Peter and Paul in the village of Sludka. In 1894, leaving the first class of the Perm seminary, he was appointed teacher at the parish school of Dobryanka. He was then a teacher and psalm-⁠reader in the village of Ilinskoe, married Maria Filippovna, and they had two children, Demetrius and Olga. On 22 October 1899 he was ordained deacon for the church at Ilinskoe, keeping his post as teacher. In the following years he was a psalm-⁠reader and teacher at Perm, and on 10 July 1910 he was ordained priest for the church of the Holy Trinity in the village of Visim, where he was also head of the parish school and teacher of religion. On 4 May 1916 he was moved to the church at Yurla, and on 15 May 1916 to the church of Saint Michael the Archangel of the Ochyor works, as fourth priest, in a part of the parish with 379 households. From 1917 he was a candidate for the office of investigator in the first deanery.

In 1918 he was arrested on a denunciation, for anti-⁠Soviet activity. At that time the appeal of Bishop Andronic Nikolsky was being read in all churches, to which the Soviet authorities could not fail to respond. On 4 September 1918, after torture and mockery, Father Alexis was shot by Red soldiers in the village of Sepychi. The old residents of Sepychi tell, from their grandmother, that the Reds gathered eighteen Orthodox priests from the whole region, and people from the neighbouring villages were forced to watch. The priests were led to the village cemetery, made to dig a common grave themselves, allowed to pray and shot; they were thrown into the pit and barely covered with earth. He is commemorated on 4 September, on 7 February and in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Perm Metropolis, on 14 February.