Barlaam Popov

Holy Hieromartyr Barlaam Popov, a priest, born Barlaam Petrovich Popov on 19 June 1880 in the family of a priest in the village of Lobanovo, Sevsk district, Orel province, studied at the theological school in Sevsk and at the seminary in Orel, which he finished in 1903. He was a teacher at a parish school at Voskresensk-⁠na-⁠Mezine. In 1906 he married Raisa Grigorievna Prudnikova and they had children, among them Rimma, Zinaida, Maria, Galina and Elena. On 8 December 1906 he was ordained deacon and on 10 December priest, by Bishop Mitrofan (Afonsky) of Yelets. He served at the Trinity church in Pozdnyashovka, directed the building of the parish school and was a religion teacher. On 1 January 1917 he was moved to his native village, Lobanovo.

In the autumn of the civil war, during the fighting for Sevsk, Red soldiers wanted to kill the priest and his family. Warned by villagers, Father Barlaam hid, and the peasants kept him hidden for four days. After the Denikinites came he resumed services, at which he commemorated Patriarch Tikhon and the local bishop. When Denikin's forces withdrew, the peasants no longer dared to hide him, and he resolved to cross with his family to Ukraine, to his brother Nicholas, at Alexandro-⁠Grushevsk. On a cart, with four small children and his wife pregnant, he reached the station of Arbuzovo, where he sold the horse and they went by train to Kharkov. He left his family in a convent, reached Alexandro-⁠Grushevsk, but did not find his brother and went on to Ekaterinodar. He lived there and at a monastery in the Kuban region, then served in the stanitsa of Pereyaslavskaya until April 1920, when he returned home and was appointed priest at Sevsk.

From 1920 he served at the church of the Great Martyr Barbara in Sevsk, and from 1924 at the church of the Exaltation of the Cross, at the request of the parishioners. His daughter Galina recalled that her father rose about five in the morning, prayed long, served almost every day, received everyone warmly, performed the Mysteries and was kind, never raising his voice. The family was poor, but the parents made a Christmas tree for the children with paper toys. He cared about the education of the children, and the first two daughters became teachers. He fought actively against the renovationist schism, and in 1925 the renovationist church administration of Bryansk removed him. On 11 April 1925 he was arrested and held in Bryansk, released on 11 June, then arrested again on 1 December 1925 and released on 24 December, because it was not established that he had spread the rumours. By 1930 he was an archpriest. He was a member of the deanery council and after 1932 dean of the Sevsk district, helped priests returned from prison, and was loved by schoolchildren, who came to him for confession. On 14 October 1932 he was arrested on a charge of keeping gold currency and released on 18 November.

On 2 August 1937 he was arrested and held in prison in Sevsk (the short life speaks of an arrest in the autumn of 1936). On 22 November 1937 the NKVD troika of Orel region sentenced him to death, with confiscation of his property. He was shot on 8 December 1937 in Bryansk. The family could learn nothing certain of his fate. He was rehabilitated on 27 July 1989, and the Holy Synod numbered him among the New Martyrs and Confessors on 17 July 2006.

He is commemorated on 8 December, on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, and on 3 October in the Synaxis of the Saints of Bryansk, all in the new style.