Ignatius Sadkovsky

Saint Ignatius (in the world Sergei Sergeevich Sadkovsky, 1887-1938), hieromartyr, was Bishop of Skopin, vicar of the Ryazan diocese, a scholar of the writings of Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov, a former monk of the Zosima Hermitage and a confessor of the Church in the camps. He died on 9 February 1938 in the Kuloilag camp near Arkhangelsk. He was numbered among the new martyrs in 2002.

Childhood and formation

He was born on 21 October 1887 in Moscow, in the family of Archpriest Sergei Maximovich Sadkovsky, rector of the church of Sophia, the Wisdom of God. He had seven other brothers and sisters. From earliest childhood his heart was kindled with love for the Lord, which showed in his zeal for prayer and the services and for meeting spiritual people. At seven he began to perform various church obediences under his father's direction. He graduated from the Zaikonospassky church school (1901), the Moscow seminary (1907) and the Moscow Theological Academy (1911), as candidate of theology, with the work The Most Reverend Ignatius Brianchaninov and His Ascetic Outlook. He was tonsured a monk in 1910, ordained hierodeacon in 1911 and then hieromonk. He taught at the Tomsk seminary, was assistant librarian at the Academy and continued research on Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov.

Hieromonk at Zosima and bishop

Hieromonk Ignatius felt drawn to a life of solitude and struggle, whose model was the Zosima Hermitage in Smolensk, with its elders. His spiritual father was the elder recluse Hieroschemamonk Alexei (Soloviev). Later he was confessor of the brethren and serving hieromonk at the relics of Saint Daniel of Moscow at Saint Daniel's Monastery, under the abbot Bishop Theodore (Pozdeevsky).

On 5 April 1920 he was consecrated Bishop of Belev, vicar of the Tula diocese. In 1922, after the arrest of Bishop Juvenal, he took charge of the diocese. He did not recognize the Renovationist Church Council and said that the only legitimate head of the Church was Patriarch Tikhon and that the other bodies that had appeared with the support of Soviet power were illegitimate and heretical. In response the Renovationists removed him from leadership of the diocese. At his initiative an Orthodox Transfiguration community was formed at Belev, of monastics, intellectuals, peasants and townspeople, which lasted until 1937, when it was crushed and many of its members, including Bishop Nikita (Pribytkov), were shot.

Arrests, camps and martyrdom

On 17 January 1923 he was arrested for counter-⁠revolutionary agitation, with his brother Hieromonk George, and sentenced to three years in camp. In September 1923 he was sent to Solovki. In 1926 he took part in drawing up the Solovki Epistle, addressed to the government of the USSR by the Orthodox bishops of the islands. In the camp he fell gravely ill with tuberculosis. Released in 1926 and returned to Belev, he was arrested again at the end of the year and then in 1927. He performed monastic tonsures in secret and encouraged the founding of underground monasteries. In November 1929 he was arrested again with his brother, on denunciations by Renovationists, and in 1930 was sentenced to three years in camp, served in the Arkhangelsk region. He was released in 1932.

From 3 February 1933 he was Bishop of Skopin, vicar of the Ryazan diocese, then briefly Bishop of Lipetsk, and from 24 September 1935 again at Skopin. He was arrested on 20 February 1936 and sentenced to five years of exile in the North. He was arrested again in exile, sentenced by the NKVD troika of Arkhangelsk to ten years' imprisonment and sent to Kuloilag, where he died on 9 February 1938. He was buried in an unknown place on the camp's territory. Contemporaries say that in his gaze one saw childlike purity and an inner spiritual order. He was simple in manner, merciful, accessible to all, judged no one and was severe only toward the Renovationists.

Canonization

In preparing the canonization made by the Church Abroad in 1981 his name was entered in the provisional list, with a note that he did not recognize Metropolitan Sergius. When the ROCOR list of names was published in the late 1990s his name was not included, like those of other bishops who supported Metropolitan Sergius. On 17 July 2002 the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church decided to include him in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, and he is also commemorated in the synaxis of the saints of Ryazan.