Anthony Arapov of Belogorsk

Venerable Martyr Anthony Arapov of Belogorsk, an abbot, was born in 1880 at Irkutsk and was shot after the entry of the Red Army into Irkutsk. He was canonized as a locally venerated saint of the diocese of Perm on 2 July 1998, and veneration throughout the Church was established by the Council of Bishops of the Russian Church of the year 2000. He is commemorated on 25 August, on 7 February and in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Perm Metropolis, on 14 February.

From 1897 he laboured at the Belogorsk Monastery for men of Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker in the diocese of Perm. On 22 June 1905 he was ordained hierodeacon in the Seraphim-⁠Alexeevsky skete of the monastery and soon hieromonk. In 1909 he was appointed dean of the Belogorsk monastery, in 1911 treasurer, then acting abbot during the absence of the abbot, the holy hieromartyr Archimandrite Barlaam Konoplev. On 29 June 1917 he was raised to hegumen. Through the care of Hegumen Anthony the building of the cathedral of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross was completed at the monastery. Father Anthony's sermons were regularly printed in the "Diocesan Gazette" of Perm. After the cruel murder of Saint Barlaam by the Bolsheviks, Hegumen Anthony was appointed abbot of the Belogorsk Monastery. In 1919 he left with part of the brotherhood together with the retreating army of Admiral A. V. Kolchak. After the Red Army entered Irkutsk he was arrested and shot. He wrote "A Symphony of the Promises, Types and Prophecies of the Old Testament with the Gospel History of the New" (Perm, 1917).