Euthymius Lyubovichev

Venerable Martyr Euthymius Lyubovichev was a hieromonk of Optina and died in prison at Bryansk in 1931. In 2005 he was numbered among the saints as a venerable martyr, for veneration throughout the Church. He is commemorated on 6 (19) July, the day of his death, and in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia.

He was born in 1875 in the village of Buda-⁠Monastyrskaya, Kaluga governorate, into the family of a well-⁠off peasant, Alexei Pavlovich Lyubovichev, with the name Efim Alexeevich. After six years of army service, about 1902, he entered the Optina hermitage as a novice. On 31 August 1910 he was numbered among the brethren. In 1914 to 1917 he was in the army as a worker in a field hospital, then returned to the hermitage.

After the closing of the monastery he worked in the museum Optina Hermitage, then moved to Kozelsk. In June 1930 he was ordained hieromonk by the holy hieromartyr Seraphim (Ostroumov), archbishop of Smolensk. He served as priest in the villages of Spas-⁠Demenskoe and Bobrovo in the Dumenichi district of the Western region (now the Kaluga region).

In early 1931 he was arrested on a charge of group anti-⁠Soviet agitation, for supposedly urging the peasants of the village of Bobrovo not to join the collective farm, and was held first in the prison at Dumenichi, then in that of Bryansk. At interrogations he answered: “I served in faith and truth the faith of Christ and have always said that all deprivations come by the will of God and we must endure until death... Soviet power exists in Russia as a punishment from God to the Russian people, who have forgotten the faith of Christ, forgotten the King of Heaven and His anointed on earth.”

He died in prison, during the investigation, on 19 July 1931, by the official version of tuberculosis. He was numbered among the new martyrs and confessors of Russia at the session of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church of 23 September (6 October) 2005.