Evgraf Evarestov

Saint Evgraf Evarestov, hieromartyr, was a cathedral archpriest in Ufa, a seminary teacher and a man of wide learning. He was shot by the Bolsheviks in December 1919 because he would not abandon his flock. The Church remembers him on 24 November and at the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia.

Early life and education

He was born on 1 May 1858 in the village of Kirsanovka in the Buguruslan district of Samara province (today Kirsanovo, Orenburg region), into the family of a village priest. His brothers Alexander and Gennady also became priests.

He studied at the church school in Buguruslan (1873) and the Samara seminary (1879). After the seminary he taught Russian and Church Slavonic at the church school in Samara, and in 1885 he graduated from the Kazan Theological Academy as a candidate of theology. That same year he became assistant inspector of the Ufa seminary.

Priest and teacher

His wife, Anna Vasilievna, also came from a priest's family. They had fifteen children, three of whom died in infancy. On 24 May 1887 he was ordained deacon by Bishop Dionysius of Ufa, and the next day priest for the Resurrection Cathedral in Ufa. In 1900 he was raised to the rank of archpriest.

He had wide knowledge, a gift for speech and skill in debate. He preached constantly, served as dean of the cathedral from 1897 and of the house churches of Ufa from 1902, and acted as censor of sermons and of diocesan publications. He founded and led the diocesan fund for the support of the clergy. From 1887 to 1917 he taught polemical theology and the history of the Russian schism at the seminary, and he also served there as inspector, librarian and, from 1903 to 1905, rector. He taught religion at the land-⁠surveying school, was diocesan catechist and chaired the diocesan school council.

He also worked in mission: he was treasurer of the diocesan committee of the Orthodox Missionary Society and, from 1905, head of the mission among the Old Believers. He belonged to many charitable societies, including those for the deaf and mute, for the families of men called to war, and for poor seminary students. He wrote more than forty works of church history, sermons and instructions, among them an account of the wonderworking Kazan icon of the Mother of God kept in the Ufa cathedral (1894). He received church distinctions and state orders, and several expressions of gratitude from his bishops for his teaching and labour.

The civil war and martyrdom

During the civil war he set up an infirmary at the cathedral and helped to collect clothing, linen and money for the People's Army, which fought the Bolsheviks. When the Red Army took Ufa in 1919 he was arrested, but he was released shortly before Admiral Kolchak's troops arrived in March.

When the Reds returned in June 1919, most of the clergy left the city with the blessing of Bishop Andrew (Ukhtomsky). Father Evgraf refused to leave his people and kept serving in the cathedral. Four of his sons had served in Kolchak's army, and two of his daughters had gone away with it.

On 18 November 1919 he was arrested on the order of the special department of the Eastern Front and imprisoned in Ufa. During interrogations that lasted for hours he was beaten, dragged by the beard and spat upon. On 30 November he was sentenced to death and he was shot in December 1919 in Ufa (8 December according to some records). His burial place is unknown. His wife was also arrested and sentenced to a camp, and the children were handed over to the state. In March 1920 the family was allowed to return to their house in Ufa, where his wife reposed in 1922.

Veneration

In 1999 he was glorified as a locally venerated saint of the Ufa diocese. In August 2000 the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church included his name in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia of the twentieth century, for veneration throughout the Church. His feast is on 24 November.