Euthymius Shirshilov of Belogorsk

Holy Venerable Martyr Euthymius Shirshilov of Belogorsk, a monk, received the crown of martyrdom in August 1918, in the Belogorsk Monastery in the Perm province, together with Archimandrite Barlaam and other brothers of the monastery. He was glorified in 1998 as a locally venerated saint of the Perm diocese and numbered among the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church at the Jubilee Council of Bishops in August 2000.

Archimandrite Barlaam, in the world Vasily Evfimovich Konoplev, was born in 1858 in a family of Old Believers without priests and came, through his search for truth, to the Orthodox Church. In 1893 he was tonsured ryassophore and settled on Belaya Gora, where those who desired the monastic life gathered around him. On 1 February 1894 he was tonsured a monk with the name Barlaam and was ordained hierodeacon, then hieromonk.

He was appointed head of the missionary monastery then being built on Belaya Gora, later called the Athos of the Urals. Preaching was heard there morning and evening, and no service was left without teaching. In June 1917 the cathedral of the monastery was consecrated, with a great crowd of pilgrims, and Bishop Andronicus of Perm came then.

In August 1918 the Bolsheviks seized the monastery. The Red soldiers overturned and defiled the altar of the cathedral, made a latrine in the archimandrite's cell, and turned the icon-⁠painting workshop into a theatre, where the boy singers were forced to sing worldly songs. Many monks were killed after cruel tortures. On 12 (25) August Archimandrite Barlaam was arrested and shot on the road to the town of Osa.

Many monks of the monastery also received martyrdom: the hieromonks Sergius, Elias, Viacheslav, Joasaph, John, Anthony; the hierodeacons Michael, Bessarion, Matthew, Euthymius; the monks Barnabas, Demetrius, Sabbas, Hermogenes, Arcadius, Euthymius, Marcellus; the novices John, James, Peter, James, Alexander, Theodore, Peter, Sergius, Alexis. Their graves were hidden by the authorities and remain unknown. Of Euthymius Shirshilov the sources say no more than that he was one of these brothers.

He is commemorated on 25 August, on 14 February in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Perm Metropolis, and on 7 February in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church (new style).