Averky Kedrov

Saint Averky Kedrov, Hieromartyr, was Archbishop of Volhynia and Zhitomir, a pastor beloved by his flock who passed through camps and exile in the years of Soviet persecution. Born in Russia in 1879, he suffered repeatedly and was shot at Ufa on 27 November 1937. He was canonized in 1981 by the Russian Church Outside Russia as a hieromartyr among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia.

Youth and monastic life

He was born in 1879 at Yaransk in the Vyatka governorate, into the large family of Archpriest Peter Kedrov, and was baptized Polycarp. He studied at the ecclesiastical school at Yaransk (1894), the Vyatka seminary (1900) and the St Petersburg Theological Academy (1904), where he took the degree of candidate of theology. From 1904 he taught Holy Scripture at the seminary in Lithuania. He visited Mount Athos and Jerusalem and described his pilgrimage in public lectures and in a booklet, "Through the Holy Land".

On 2 July 1910, at Valaam monastery, he was tonsured a monk by Archbishop Sergius of Finland with the name Averky and was ordained hierodeacon and hieromonk. From 1911, as archimandrite, he was rector of the Volhynia seminary, where he won the love and respect of teachers and students.

Bishop of Ostrog

On 29 June 1915 he was consecrated Bishop of Ostrog, third vicar of the Volhynia diocese. He also became abbot of the Epiphany monastery in Zhitomir, chairman of the diocesan school council and censor of the diocesan journal. During the First World War, when the front line passed not far from Ostrog, he went to the front at Christmas with gifts from the diocese for the soldiers. In 1916 he received the Order of Saint Vladimir. In 1918 he took part in the second and third sessions of the Local Council of the Russian Church. After the seminary was closed, in 1921 and 1922 he organized pastoral courses at Zhitomir, and from the children of the Epiphany monastery's parishioners he formed a "Young Brotherhood", which tended the graves of the monastery cemetery and decorated the church on feast days.

Archbishop of Volhynia and Zhitomir

In November 1921 he took over the leadership of the diocese, after Bishop Thaddeus, who had been governing it provisionally, was arrested and expelled from Ukraine. Those who knew him remembered the little garden beside his house in Zhitomir, with cherry trees and flowers, which the children of devout families, the "young brothers", came to water and for which they were rewarded with sweets through the window. He told them about the constellations, and they learned from him what Orion and the Great Bear were. Metropolitan Manuil Lemeshevsky said of him that he was an exceptionally kind, welcoming and deeply believing man, approachable as a bishop and loved by the people of Zhitomir, who led a pure and sober life and liked to serve often.

In 1922, during the Volga famine and the confiscation of church valuables, he had Patriarch Tikhon's epistle brought to Zhitomir and read to the people. For this Archpriest Arkady Ostalsky was arrested, and on 8 June the bishop was brought to trial for "distributing and keeping the epistle of Patriarch Tikhon". He was released before the trial on bail, took part in August and September 1922 in the Council of Ukrainian Orthodox bishops and, on 19 December, the tribunal reduced his sentence by a third, with loss of certain rights for five years. In prison he fell gravely ill with typhus.

The Renovationist trial

In August 1923, under heavy pressure from the secret police and without full information, he recognized the Renovationist movement, was named Bishop of Volhynia and Zhitomir with the rank of archbishop and received his freedom. On 7 February 1924 he convened a plenum of the diocesan administration, which recognized the Renovationist Synod as the supreme body. The police calculation proved right: Renovationism spread in the villages, while in the towns the faithful remained close to Patriarch Tikhon. The diocese stood on the brink of schism.

On 6 November 1924 he left for Moscow, where he remained until May 1925 and confessed his error. He was received back in the rank of bishop and, by all appearances, raised then to archbishop. On 12 April 1925 he attended Patriarch Tikhon's funeral, and as one of sixty bishops he signed the act by which supreme church authority passed to Metropolitan Peter of Krutitsy. When he returned to Zhitomir on 30 April 1925, the diocese was already divided between Renovationists and loyal followers of the patriarch. He showed distrust of the synodal representatives from the railway station onward, did not bless delegates to the Renovationist council at Kharkov, and in October 1925 declared that he categorically refused to submit to the Renovationist Synod of Ukraine. On 26 February 1926 a diocesan congress asked him to come under that Synod's jurisdiction; the archbishop refused, and Bishop Paul was chosen in his place. In May 1926 the authorities gave the cathedral in Zhitomir to the Renovationists, and several of his associates were struck by repression. On 19 October 1926 he was arrested.

Exile and imprisonment

On 7 January 1927 he was sentenced to three years of exile in Kazakhstan and sent to Khodzheyli in Karakalpakia. He received Metropolitan Sergius Stragorodsky's Declaration with great coldness but did not break communion with him. He was released early, though the news reached him only after eight months, and on 24 October 1928 he returned to govern the diocese again. It is remembered that in 1928 and 1929 he was often summoned for interrogation, which sometimes delayed the liturgy by an hour or more, and he reminded the interrogators that by the typikon the liturgy must begin by noon at the latest and that the people were waiting for him in the cathedral. On ordinary days he liked to stand in the choir, reading and singing, he served with devotion, and he beautified the cathedral, restoring the painting and placing a particle of the relics of Saint Job of Pochaev in a shrine for veneration.

On 15 February 1930 he was arrested in Zhitomir because he had read a document sent to Patriarch Photius of Constantinople describing the plight of the Church in the USSR. He was held in Butyrka prison in Moscow and sentenced to three years of exile in the Russian North, at Arkhangelsk. He never returned to his diocese. On 23 January 1931 he was arrested again with 21 believers, charged with forming a counter-⁠revolutionary group and helping exiled clergy, and on 2 December he received another three years of exile at Totma. In 1933 he received a further three years at Birsk in Bashkiria. From exile he kept in touch with the diocese by letter and so governed it for almost five years, until on 23 October 1934 Archbishop Philaret Linchevsky was appointed to the see.

Martyrdom

On 25 July 1937 he was arrested at Birsk and taken to the NKVD prison in Ufa. Under pressure from the investigators, who probably used torture, he admitted guilt. On 10 November 1937 a troika sentenced him to death, and on 27 November he was shot. He is believed to have been buried in a common grave at the Sergiyevsky cemetery in Ufa.

Veneration

In 1981 the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia canonized him as a hieromartyr, by entering him in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, without a separate day of commemoration. His brothers also served the Church: Pachomius, Archbishop of Chernigov, who was also killed in 1937, and Michael, Bishop of Wroclaw.