Anthony Pankeev

Saint Anthony Pankeev, Hieromartyr, was bishop of Belgorod, a hierarch who passed through the Solovki camps, exile and the last persecution, and was shot at Blagoveshchensk in the Far East on 1 June 1938. Born on 1 January 1892 in a village of the Kherson governorate, into a priest's family, he was numbered by the Council of Bishops of August 2000 among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia.

Youth

Born Vasily Alexandrovich Pankeev in the village of Sadovoe, Kherson district, into the family of Fr Alexander Pankeev, he graduated from the Odessa seminary in 1912, with good marks, and entered the Kyiv Theological Academy; through an exchange of students between the Kyiv and Petrograd academies he was sent to the third year at Petrograd. On 10 January 1915 Bishop Anastasy Alexandrov of Yamburg tonsured him a monk, together with his classmate Vladimir Belobabchenko, with the name Anthony, and on 17 January ordained him hierodeacon.

In February 1915, at the request of Fr Alexander Albitsky, a deputy in the Duma, and with the blessing of Metropolitan Vladimir of Petrograd, Hierodeacon Anthony went to the front to serve and give spiritual help to wounded and sick soldiers, in a field church of one of the four sanitary detachments of the National Union of Russia. In May 1915 he came to Petrograd, and on 24 May Bishop Anastasy ordained him hieromonk at the church of the Nativity of the Mother of God. He returned to the front as rector of a field church. On 26 January 1917, for his blameless pastoral service at the front, he received the Order of Saint Anna, third class. Because of army service his studies were delayed, but in 1917 he nevertheless graduated from the academy with the degree of candidate of theology. He was then sent to Odessa, raised to hegumen and taught at the Odessa seminary until its closure in 1920.

Renovationism and the see of Mariupol

When the Renovationist schism arose in 1922, in June 1923 the Renovationist Metropolitan Evdokim Meshchersky summoned him and said: "Tomorrow you will be consecrated." Hegumen Anthony was bewildered, yielded to Evdokim's pressure and was consecrated by Renovationist bishops Bishop of Kherson, vicar of Odessa. In the summer of 1924 he repented before Patriarch Tikhon, and on 9 September 1924 he was consecrated, in the church of Saint Pimen the Great at Novye Vorotniki, Bishop of Mariupol, vicar of the Yekaterinoslav diocese. At the end of 1924 he was arrested and sent to Kharkov, from where he continued to govern the vicariate. In 1935, asked by the investigator which Orthodox bishops he had associated with at Kharkov, he said he knew well Bishop Constantine Dyakov, Archbishops Boris Shipulin and Onuphry Gagalyuk, and Bishops Stephen Andriashenko, Macarius Karmazin, Paul Kratirov and Damascene Tsedrik, who served in the same church and on feast days gathered at someone's house to discuss church questions, among them the Gregorian and Lubny schisms.

In September 1926 he was arrested at Kharkov and taken to Moscow, to Butyrka prison, and sentenced to three years in the Solovki camp. In the camp he was tried again and sent into exile; at the Leningrad transit prison he fell ill with pulmonary tuberculosis, which delayed his departure, and he served three years of exile at Yeniseisk.

Bishop of Belgorod

After his exile he asked for a see. The exarch of Ukraine, Metropolitan Constantine Dyakov, blessed him to apply to the deputy locum tenens, Metropolitan Sergius Stragorodsky, who appointed him in Moscow to Belgorod. On 21 November 1933 he was named Bishop of Belgorod; the Belgorod diocese was then founded out of the Belgorod vicariate of the Kursk diocese.

Arrest and martyrdom

On 25 February 1935 he was arrested. Renovationists and Gregorians gave false testimony against him. He was accused of being himself a counter-⁠revolutionary, an active follower of the "True Orthodox Church", of having begun to gather like-⁠minded people from among counter-⁠revolutionary clergy from various cities; that in a short time, at his invitation, fifteen priests came to the Belgorod diocese, that he collected money for repressed clergy and their families and that he instructed the priests of his diocese, under the pretext of strengthening pastoral work among collective farmers, to draw them away from work. At the interrogations, begun immediately after the arrest, he stood firm, did not admit guilt and did not sign false testimony. On 1 August 1935 the NKVD told him the investigation was over. On 20 August he wrote to the prosecutor asking to see the file, and about the charge of belonging to the "True Orthodox Church" he wrote: "I do not admit guilt... I belong to the church current headed by Metropolitan Sergius... In the Belgorod diocese there is not a single priest belonging to the Josephite group."

On 11 September 1935 a special panel of the regional court sentenced him to ten years' deprivation of freedom, together with Archpriest Mitrofan Vilgelmsky; Fr Alexander Yeroshov and the reader Mikhail Voznesensky received five years, and Fr Mikhail Deineka three. All were sent to the Far East, to the same camp as Archbishop Onuphry Gagalyuk of Kursk. Onuphry wrote on 24 August 1937: "Vladyka Anthony Pankeev lives now not far from us, at the Srednebelsky state farm... He has settled in well, though his health has weakened a little... We work in the common fields together with Vladyka Anthony." In February 1938 a new case was begun against him: he was accused of having headed, with Onuphry, a counter-⁠revolutionary group that disorganized production and whose members gathered in a tent, held services and sang prayers. In March the accused were imprisoned at Blagoveshchensk, and on 17 March an NKVD troika sentenced them to death. On 1 June 1938 Archbishop Onuphry Gagalyuk, Bishop Anthony Pankeev, the priests Hippolytus Krasnovsky, Nicholas Sadovsky, Mitrofan Vilgelmsky, Vasily Ivanov, Nicholas Kulakov, Maxim Bogdanov, Mikhail Deineka, Alexander Yeroshov, Alexander Saulsky and Paul Popov and the readers Grigory Bogoyavlensky and Mikhail Voznesensky were shot.

Veneration

At the Council of Bishops of the Russian Church in 2000, Bishop Anthony Pankeev was numbered among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia. He is commemorated with the synaxis of the New Martyrs.