Gabriel of Melekess

Saint Gabriel, the Venerable Confessor (in the world Ivan Ivanovich Igoshkin, 1888 to 1959), archimandrite, was a priest at the church of Saint Nicholas in Pyzhi, in Moscow, and then at Melekess (today Dimitrovgrad). He spent a total of seventeen years in prisons and camps for his faith, served in secret and fell asleep in peace in 1959. The Russian Church canonized him on 20 August 2000. He is commemorated on 5 October, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors and in the Synaxis of the Saints of Simbirsk, and is regarded as patron of the city of Dimitrovgrad.

Youth

He was born on 23 May 1888 (old style), in the village of Samodurovka in the Gorodishche district, Penza province (today the settlement of Sadovka), in a family of deeply believing peasants. After two classes at the church school he spent six years as a novice at the Zhadovskaya hermitage. In 1909 the novice John was called into the tsarist army. In 1909 to 1913 he was a singer at the military cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul in the fortress of Kovno. In 1914 he was called to the First World War. At the end of 1917 he was demobilized for illness and returned to his native village, where he was psalm-⁠reader in the church of the Nativity of Christ.

Ordination and service

In January 1921 Bishop Tikhon (Obolensky) of the Urals and Nikolaevsk ordained him deacon, and he began service in the Holy Trinity church in the city of Pokrovsk. In 1922 he was ordained priest. When Metropolitan Tikhon moved to Moscow, Father John went with him. In 1922 to 1928 he served in the Protection cathedral of the Convent of Martha and Mary. During the Renovationist schism he rejected renovationism and stayed faithful to Patriarch Tikhon. After his death he regarded Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) as deputy of the patriarchal see, being a supporter of centralized authority in the Church. In 1926 the Convent of Martha and Mary was closed and all the nuns, with the abbess Valentina (Gordeeva), were arrested and sent into exile. In 1928 the church of the Protection was desecrated and turned into a cinema. On 28 August 1928 militant atheists carried the icons out of the church, took the stones from the vestments and broke and burned the icons.

In 1929 he received monastic tonsure with the name Gabriel, and a year later was raised to hegumen. After the closing of the church of the Protection, he and its last rector, Father V. Vorontsov (later Metropolitan Eleutherius of Leningrad and Ladoga), began to serve in the church of Saint Nicholas in Pyzhi, near the Convent of Martha and Mary. Until 1934 Father John was rector of the church of Saint Nicholas.

The trials

In 1931 Hegumen Gabriel was arrested for the first time, accused of "systematic anti-⁠Soviet activity". With him Tatiana Grimblit was arrested for the fourth time. He suffered exhausting interrogations and both were sentenced to three years in camp. In the interrogation records he said that he had not agitated among parishioners against the authorities, that he had always said that Soviet power, like all power, is given by God, so must be obeyed and prayed for, that the Lord might improve the situation of believers. He did not plead guilty. He served the sentence in Vishlag, in the Yekaterinburg region, where there were many imprisoned priests, among them Archpriest Gleb Koptyagin, Hieromonk Nectarius (Grigoriev, later metropolitan) and Bishop Anthony (Milovidov) of Omsk. He stayed there until 29 June 1932, then was released because of illness and exiled under OGPU supervision to Rostov, in the Yaroslavl region, and later to Vladimir, until December 1933.

Released, he returned to Moscow and continued to serve in the church of Saint Nicholas in Pyzhi. In 1934 Archbishop Pitirim (Krylov) of Moscow raised him to archimandrite. But in 1934 the church of Saint Nicholas was taken by the Renovationists. Then he moved to the church of the Resurrection at Kadashi. On the feast of the Transfiguration, 19 August 1934, in the middle of the solemn service, he and nine other priests were arrested, accused of belonging to a "counter-⁠revolutionary church-⁠monarchist group". On 3 October he was released "for unproved guilt". The Moscow church where he had served was closed. He moved to the church of the Protection in the village of Zvyagino, then, after Komsomol members burned the church in 1936, to the church of the Descent of the Holy Spirit in Pushkino.

On 4 November 1936, in the middle of the service on the feast of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God, he was arrested again, accused of counter-⁠revolutionary activity, and held at Butyrka. On 7 January 1937 the indictment was given him to read. For taking part in an invented "counter-⁠revolutionary group" he was sentenced to five years in a camp. He was sent to the settlement of Chibyu, in Komi, in the Ukhtpechlag. In his memoirs he wrote that one night he had secretly served the Paschal service and all present received Communion. In the morning the chief summoned him and threateningly ordered him to sweep the camp yard. He answered that on the day of the great feast of Pascha he would not break the feast. Then the chief called the overseer, who shaved his head and beard and let him go with mockery: "Here you are, priest, your Holy Pascha".

The term of imprisonment ended at the end of 1941, but he was released only in July 1942. After release he worked at the camp until October 1942, then went to Kuznetsk in Penza province, to his sister, Pelagia, and from there walked to Ulyanovsk, where the leadership of the Moscow Patriarchate, with Metropolitan Sergius, was in evacuation. The NKVD did not allow him to serve at Ulyanovsk. Until the end of the war he lived in the village of Bazarny Ureny with two believing women, Matryona and Anna Belyakova. By 1946 his petitions to be assigned a place of service were at last met: Bishop Sophronius of Ulyanovsk and Melekess wanted to name him rector of the church of the Mother of God of the Burning Bush at Ulyanovsk. But the commissioner for religious affairs, because of the father's popularity, forbade him to reside at Ulyanovsk. Then Gabriel became rector of the church of Saint Nicholas in the city of Melekess.

In 1949, on the denunciation of the parish choir director, Kostin, he was arrested again, accused of "anti-⁠Soviet disposition and agitation". At the trial he said he was religious, a believer, that he had never engaged in anti-⁠Soviet agitation, that no one anywhere had heard from him hostile words against the Soviet power and its leaders, that he had preached only in church and called believers to honest labour and the fulfilment of their civic duties. On 29 December 1949 the regional court sentenced him to ten years' imprisonment. The sick sixty-⁠year-⁠old priest was sent to the camps at Mariinsk, in the Kemerovo region. On 4 September 1953 he asked the Supreme Court of the USSR to annul the decision. On 3 October 1954 the Kemerovo regional court decided on early release because of illness. He was freed on 23 October, having served exactly half the sentence. On 6 January 1955 the Presidium of the Supreme Court of the RSFSR rehabilitated him fully. He returned to Melekess, where his confiscated house was returned. For three prison terms on invented charges, in essence for faith, Gabriel spent seventeen years behind bars.

Last years

After release he was weak and prayed at home. He accepted his trials as natural, saying he was glad the Lord had found him worthy to suffer with his people and to bear to the full all the sorrows that more than once fell on the Orthodox. In summer 1956 he made his last journey to the Penza region, to his native parts, where he served the Divine Liturgy, secretly baptized infants and served at the grave of his parents in the village of Syresi. Returned to Melekess, he grew very weak. Foreseeing his departure, on 18 October 1959 he asked that the "Canon at the Parting of the Soul from the Body" be read over him. He fell asleep in sleep.

Glorification

He was numbered among the saints on 20 August 2000, for veneration throughout the Church, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, at the Bishops' Council. On 18 October 2000 his holy relics were found, which rest today in the cathedral of Saint Nicholas in Dimitrovgrad. In 2004, in the village of Sosnovka in the Penza region, in his native place, a wooden church was built, consecrated in the name of Venerable Confessor Gabriel, on the initiative of the Ulyanovsk resident L. V. Kulikova, researcher and biographer of Father Gabriel. The church stands on the site of Father Gabriel's parental home. A memorial cross has been set beside it.