Anfisa Sysoeva

Holy Venerable Martyr Anfisa Sysoeva, a nun (in the world Alexandra Matveevna Sysoeva), was born on 17 April 1868 (or 1870) in the village of Ivanovskoe, Tula province. She was shot on 8 January 1938. The Russian Church honours her among the New Martyrs and Confessors.

From 1878 she laboured in the Exaltation of the Cross Monastery in the town of Belev. In 1921 the monastery was closed, and the nun Anfisa lived in the town and worked as lamp-⁠lighter and cleaner at the church of Saint Stephen, by the former monastery. On 1 June 1931 Mother Anfisa was arrested for having "taken part in the organisation of an illegal monastery at the church of Saint Stephen in Belev"; on 18 June she was sentenced under articles 58-10 and 58-11 to exile in Kazakhstan.

She was released in 1934 and returned to Belev, where on 16 December 1937 she was arrested again by the Belev department of the NKVD, in the "group case of Bishop Nikita Pribytkov". On 30 December 1937 the NKVD troika of the Tula region sentenced her to death, on a charge that "she was in an underground monastery and engaged in counter-⁠revolutionary activity". On 8 January 1938, on the day of the Synaxis of the Mother of God, Venerable Martyr Anfisa was shot and buried with other martyrs in a common grave at the 162nd kilometre of the Simferopol highway. She is commemorated on 8 January, on 7 February and in the Synaxis of the Saints of Tula, on 5 October.