Antipas Kirillov

Holy Venerable Martyr Antipas Kirillov, a hieromonk, was born on 3 August 1870 in the village of Bratki, in the Borisoglebsk district of the Tambov province, in the family of the peasant Peter Kirillov, and received at Baptism the name Anthony. He was shot on 7 March 1938 at Butovo, near Moscow. The Russian Church honours him among the New Martyrs of Moscow.

Monastic life

After the parish school he lived with relatives until he was twenty-⁠seven. Deeply religious from childhood, in 1898 he entered the brotherhood of Mount Athos and laboured there until 1912, when he was received into the brotherhood of the Novospassky Monastery in Moscow. He was tonsured into the mantle with the name Antipas. After the revolution of 1917 he returned to the village of Bratki and served in the church as psalm-⁠reader. In 1929 he was ordained hieromonk and served in the village of Kozlovka, in the Borisoglebsk district. From 1931 he served at the church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in the village of Tatarintsevo, in the Bronnitsy district of the Moscow region. In his six years of service the parishioners loved him for his pious life, for his complete devotion to the Lord, for his sermons and because at any time they could come to him for counsel.

Arrest

In 1937 he was sixty-⁠seven, life was drawing to its close, he had no close relatives left, and for his soul a broad path of service to God and neighbour was open. His last service he served on the feast of the Meeting of the Lord; on 16 February 1938 he was arrested and imprisoned at Kolomna. He was interrogated by the head of the district NKVD department and the head of the passport office of the Bronnitsy militia; the interrogations began almost at once after the arrest and lasted more than a day. Accused of having slandered the Soviet authorities in August 1937, saying that they were a punishment from God and that they exile and jail the best people, he answered: "I did not say that, because I am a believer; I said that every authority is from God and we submit to it." From his manuscripts it was clear that in his sermons he urged believers to obedience and humility. He explained: "I said in sermons that wealth and poverty are all from God. I also said that not only we believe, but many talented people, of whom I spoke in sermons, were believers too, and I gave examples. From the calendar I took a page about the naturalist Linnaeus, to show that even the Soviet authorities praise him as a talented man and say at the same time that he was a religious man. All this was done to strengthen faith." About not having voted in the elections to the Supreme Soviet, he said that he did not vote because no horses were sent for him, though they had promised.

The investigators questioned two priests from the villages of Davydovo and Saltykovo, who served the NKVD as duty witnesses and informers, and they signed the testimony required; then a villager of Tatarintsevo, who agreed to be a false witness, said that Father Antipas, before the elections, had said: "Why should we elect? Who are those the communists put forward as candidates? They are the same antichrists, they continue the work begun by the Bolsheviks; we need not vote." On 27 February 1938 the NKVD troika sentenced him to death. Hieromonk Antipas Kirillov was shot on 7 March 1938 and buried in an unknown common grave at the Butovo firing range. He is commemorated on 7 March, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo, on 20 May, in the Synaxis of the Venerable Fathers of the Russian Saint Panteleimon Monastery on Athos, on 17 September, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Voronezh, and in the Synaxis of the Moscow Saints.