Gerasim Sukhov

Holy Venerable Martyr Gerasim Sukhov, hieromonk, was born in 1866 in the Chembar district of Penza province, to a peasant family. He gave his whole life to the service of Christ, and in the years of the great persecution of the Church he could not escape suffering. Tonsured a monk and raised to the rank of hieromonk, Father Gerasim was arrested in 1936.

At the age of 70 he was accused of taking part in a counter-⁠revolutionary group and sentenced to five years of exile in Kazakhstan. He came to the village of Borodulikha in the Semipalatinsk region, together with a number of other clergy.

On 22 November 1937 he was arrested in exile by the Bel-⁠Agach NKVD office on the same grounds as Archpriest Dimitry Kuklin. The charges drawn up in the case of Dimitry Kuklin and others were the performance of religious services and illegal gatherings, and the spreading of agitation against the collective farms.

On 27 November 1937 he was sentenced to the highest penalty, and on 2 December the venerable martyr was shot in Semipalatinsk. He is commemorated on 7 February, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church (new style, a movable day), on 12 June, in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Penza Metropolis, and on 2 December.