Apollos Fedoseev

Holy Venerable Martyr Apollos Fedoseev, a hieromonk, was born on 11 March 1892 in the village of Monoseino in the Moscow province, in the family of the peasant Vasily Fedoseev, and received at Baptism the name Alexis. He was shot on 10 December 1937 at Butovo, near Moscow. The Russian Church honours him among the New Martyrs of Moscow.

He received home schooling. In 1914 he was received as a novice at the Valaam Monastery of the Saviour's Transfiguration in the diocese of Finland. In 1916, because of the war, he was called into the army, where he served until 1917. On 27 September 1918 he entered the Saint John the Theologian Monastery at Cheremenets, in the diocese of Petrograd, as a novice; after three months he was called into the Red Army. In 1920 he returned to the Cheremenets Monastery. According to tradition, the monastery was founded in 1476, twenty kilometres from the town of Luga, on an island in Lake Cheremenets; it had two churches, in one of which was the wonderworking icon of the Holy Apostle John. On 1 January 1922 Alexis was tonsured into the mantle with the name Apollos. With the closing of the monastery, on 14 January 1929 he was ordained hierodeacon and appointed to serve at the church in the village of Uspensky Pogost. On 15 March 1931, at the Holy Spirit church of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, Bishop Ambrose of Luga ordained him hieromonk for the church in the village of Klimentovsky Pogost. In 1933 he moved to the diocese of Moscow, to the church of the Sign in the village of Kornevskoe, in the Lotoshino district. In 1934 he was moved to the church in the village of Frol-⁠Radushkino, and in July 1936 to the church of the Holy Trinity in the village of Peski, where he served until his arrest.

Hieromonk Apollos was arrested on 4 December 1937 and imprisoned at Taganka in Moscow. The investigator told him that he deliberately prolonged the services to hinder field work in the collective farm; he answered that he did not prolong the services and had no such aim. Asked whether he went around the houses under pretext of services and carried on anti-⁠Soviet agitation, he said that he did indeed go with services to the homes of parishioners but carried on no anti-⁠Soviet agitation, and that he did not admit guilt of anti-⁠Soviet activity. The investigator heard a false witness, a baker from a neighbouring village, who said that when the village council forbade the priest Fedoseev to go round the houses with collections and services, he said that he would stir up the people's anger against the oppressors of the Orthodox Church. In a single day the investigation was closed and passed to the troika. On 9 December 1937 the NKVD troika sentenced him to death. The day before the execution Father Apollos was photographed. Hieromonk Apollos Fedoseev was shot on 10 December 1937 at the Butovo firing range and buried in an unknown common grave. He is commemorated on 10 December, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo and the Synaxis of the Moscow Saints.