Elisei of Suma

Venerable Elisha of Suma (Elisha Sumsky), the wonderworker of Solovki, lived in the fifteenth century in the village of Suma (today Sumsky Posad) and was a monk of the Solovetsky Monastery. The Russian Church numbered him among the saints in the eighteenth century. He is commemorated on 14 (27) June.

Little is known of his life. The reports of him are found in the "Miracle of a certain monk named Elisha", in the first redaction of the Life of Venerable Zosimas and Sabbatius of Solovki. Before his death he worked, with the blessing of his abbot, with four elders at fishing on the river Vyg, at the Zolotets rapids, sixty versts from the monastery. Feeling that death was near, he wished to receive the schema. The nearest hieromonk was sixty versts away, at Suma, where the elders took him by water. His body was buried behind the altar of the church of Saint Nicholas at Suma.

At Sumsky Posad there is a church in the name of Elisha of Suma. In July 1929 his relics were opened by representatives of state organs and handed over for safekeeping to the holdings of the Karelian State Museum of Local History. In 1990 they were returned to the Russian Church and are in the Holy Cross Exaltation cathedral in Petrozavodsk. On 7 January 2019, at Great Vespers in the Holy Cross Exaltation cathedral, led by Metropolitan Constantine of Petrozavodsk and Karelia, a miracle took place: the relics of Venerable Elisha began to give off a sweet fragrance.