Alexis Orlov

Saint Alexis (in the world Alexei Stepanovich Orlov, 1862-1937), hieromartyr, was Archbishop of Omsk. A city priest who became a bishop, he had a brief lapse toward the Renovationist Church, of which he publicly repented, then passed through exile and was shot on 4 September 1937 near Chimkent in Kazakhstan. He was numbered among the saints in 2000. He is commemorated on 4 September (22 August by the old calendar).

Youth and priesthood

He was born in 1862 in the family of a psalm-⁠reader in Samara. He finished the church school in Samara (1876), the Samara seminary (1882) and the Saint Petersburg Theological Academy (1886), as a candidate of theology. He taught at the diocesan girls' school in Samara and was then ordained priest at the Dormition church in Samara. He received several church distinctions in succession and was raised to archpriest. He was religion teacher at the girls' gymnasium and rector of the Dormition church and then of the Kazan cathedral in Samara, and censor of the diocesan journal. In 1919 he was widowed, leaving daughters and a son.

Episcopate

In 1922 he strayed toward the Renovationist movement. He was consecrated Bishop of Buguruslan, vicar of the Renovationist diocese of Samara, in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow. Patriarch Tikhon received him into communion in his rank of bishop, on condition that at his first service he receive the mantle, klobuk and prayer rope. When the political police arrested Bishops Anatoly and Paul and several priests, he took charge of the diocese, but at the end of 1923 he joined the Renovationists. In 1924, in the cathedral of Samara, he repented publicly before the people for this lapse and was received again into communion in his rank. He was then Bishop of Kurgan, vicar of the Tobolsk diocese (1924), of Malmyzh, vicar of the Sarapul diocese (1927), then from September 1930 administrator of the Astrakhan diocese, of Enotaevsk (1931), of Syzran (1931) and, from 24 August 1931, Bishop of Omsk. On 4 April 1933 he was raised to archbishop.

In Astrakhan he was a humble and likeable man, loved by the faithful, simple in manner, living ascetically, serving daily and a man of prayer. He told that he was exiled from Astrakhan after he bought writing paper printed with the slogan that religion is the instrument of oppression of the working masses and deftly altered the word to an instrument of consolation of the working masses.

Exile and martyrdom

On 24 April 1935 he was arrested and accused of leading a counter-⁠revolutionary group of Tikhonite clergy, of spreading rumours of an approaching war of Japan with the USSR and of working in Japan's favour. On 25 October 1935 he was sentenced to five years of exile in Kazakhstan. In December 1936 he arrived at Mirzoyan (now Taraz), where he helped found a community of the Patriarchal Church, wrote petitions to the authorities and, despite prohibitions, served at the request of the faithful.

On 15 May 1937 he was arrested again, accused of belonging to a counter-⁠revolutionary organization of churchmen, and imprisoned. He did not admit guilt and gave no testimony against others. On 26 August 1937 the NKVD troika of the South Kazakhstan region sentenced him to death, and on 4 September 1937 he was shot at Lisya Balka near Chimkent. He was rehabilitated in 1958 and 1989. In August 2000 the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church numbered him among the saints as a hieromartyr. His holy relics lie in an unknown grave at Lisya Balka.