Benjamin Frolov

Bishop Benjamin Frolov (born Veniamin Fyodorovich Frolov, 1862 or 1864 to 1936) was bishop of Baika, vicar of the diocese of Ufa, consecrated in secret in the time of persecution, imprisoned and exiled for having strengthened the faith of the peasants. Our sources do not say that he has been officially numbered among the saints and give no commemoration day; he stands in our archive as a hierarch and confessor, with no known canonization.

Beginnings

He was born into a peasant family in the village of Ichkinskoye in the Shadrinsk district of the Perm province; the exact village cannot be established, and the year of his birth is uncertain: a record of 1929 gives his age as sixty-⁠six, while in the indictment of 1930 the year 1864 is written in by hand. The church registers for 1861 to 1863 do not contain his birth. He finished the village school and in 1878 became an orphan and had to leave his native place.

He lived at Perm. In 1880 he was received as a novice at the bishop's house, in 1882 appointed psalm reader at the Cross church of the bishop's house and ordained subdeacon, and in 1886, with the blessing of Bishop Nathanael of Yekaterinburg, he entered the bishop's choir. In 1890 or 1892 he was tonsured a monk, then made hierodeacon and hieromonk. He was treasurer and then steward of the bishop's house. He was then abbot of the Chuvash men's monastery of the Mother of God Hodegetria, near Bugabashevo, which he governed for thirteen years, working for the enlightenment of the Chuvash and building a stone church. In 1907 he received the pectoral cross given by the Holy Synod. In July 1910 he took part in the reception of Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, who came to venerate the wonderworking icon of Saint Nicholas of Berezovo. He was dean of the monasteries of the second circuit of the diocese of Perm, received the rank of archimandrite, and on 30 August 1915 was consecrated bishop by Bishop Andrew (Ukhtomsky) of Ufa, in the Hodegetria monastery.

Bishop in the time of persecution

After the plundering of the monastery, on 9 to 11 November 1917, he lived in the village of Papanovka, and from November 1918 in a former convent, Saint George, at Usa-⁠Stepanovka, converted into a monastic agricultural artel. Secretly consecrated bishop of Baika, vicar of Ufa, by Bishops Trophimus (Yakobchuk) and Irenaeus (Shulmin), he opposed the renovationist movement, ordained priests from among the peasants and wrote appeals to the faithful. In 1924 he was arrested and taken to Ufa, but released the same year because of his age. He looked with disfavour on the secret ordinations of bishops for Ufa performed by Bishop Andrew in 1926, in exile.

In 1926 he retired and lived at the monastery of Saint George. In 1928 the artel was dissolved and the monks expelled. At the invitation of the faithful the old, nearly blind bishop lived at Baika, serving from time to time in the church of the Archangel Michael. On 14 November 1929 he was arrested on the charge that he "had zealously busied himself with restoring religious feeling among the peasants", which was said to have led to the "disruption of collectivization". He did not plead guilty. On 26 February 1930 he was sentenced to five years in a camp, replaced by exile in the Northern Territory, where in 1931 he lived at Onega. On 7 April 1934 he was released early because of disability.

His end

He lived at Ufa, cared for by the Church, old and sick. He reposed on 7 October 1936 and was buried in the cemetery of the Kirov district of Ufa. The report of Metropolitan Manuel (Lemeshevsky) that he was still alive in 1956 in Yakutia seems apocryphal. He was rehabilitated on 31 July 1989.