Andrew Verevkin

Andrew Verevkin was a Russian schemaarchimandrite, abbot of St Panteleimon Monastery on Athos after Macarius, for fourteen years and four months. He was born in 1834 in the Starobelsk district, Kharkov province, and reposed on 30 October 1903. He is venerated by the faithful, without a synodal canonization.

Named Alexei Ivanovich in the world, he was the son of a blacksmith, a state peasant, who served honourably for twenty-⁠five years. He learned from his father and then at the state school; in 1861 he was discharged from service because of illness and asked his parents' blessing to go to Athos. He reached there on 3 September 1863. At the intercession of Hieronymus and Macarius, the abbot Gerasim received him. After eight months he was sent to Krumitsa, the metochion with vineyards and olive groves, where he worked about ten years. He was ordained by a Russian bishop passing through Athos, at the consecration of the church of St Alexander Nevsky. In 1873 he was sent to Moscow, where the hieromonk Arsenius Minin had begun to build a chapel; the relics of St Panteleimon were taken there too and stayed in Moscow until 1918.

The abbot Macarius decided that his successor should be chosen in his lifetime, and by lot, from six names, the name Andrew came out. Father Andrew fell to the ground in tears and begged to be freed from this obedience, but Macarius rejoiced to see God's will fulfilled. He stayed almost always in his cell, never going beyond the monastery gates. He was very generous and much loved. He continued the publishing of books begun by Macarius. In his time the monastery's status as the common home of all Russian monks on Athos reached its highest point, and Patriarch Joachim III, who lived on Athos from 1889 to 1901, esteemed him and gave him a panagia. He received decorations from Tsar Nicholas and from King Alexander of Serbia. Near the end the monastery was visited by the Mother of God: one Sunday, at the distribution of alms, a photograph showed the face of the Mother of God receiving her bread from the hand of a brother. He served his last Liturgy on 15 August, in the church of the Dormition, as Macarius had. He reposed after a long illness on 30 October 1903.