John Krestiankin

Archimandrite Ioann Krestiankin (in the world Ivan Mikhailovich, 1910-2006) was a confessor and elder of the Pskov Caves Monastery, one of the most revered spiritual elders of the Russian Orthodox Church at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the next. He is venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization; since 2021 testimonies have been gathered with a view to his glorification.

Childhood and youth

He was born on 11 April 1910 in Oryol, the eighth and last child of a family of townspeople. From early childhood he served in church: at six he was a sacristan, and later a subdeacon beside Archbishop Seraphim Ostroumov of Oryol, afterwards a holy martyr. At twelve he told Bishop Nicholas of Yelets that he wished to be a monk, and was told that he must first finish school, work, and be ordained. After school he took bookkeeping courses and worked in Oryol, then from 1932 in Moscow as chief accountant of a small enterprise, a post that left him free to attend the services.

Priesthood and prison

In 1944 he became a reader at the church of the Nativity of Christ in Izmailovo; in January 1945 Metropolitan Nikolai Yarushevich ordained him deacon, and in October of that year Patriarch Alexy I ordained him priest. He preached much and was loved by his parishioners, but the Soviet authorities regarded him as unreliable because he refused to cooperate. At the same time he studied at the Moscow Theological Academy, and his thesis was devoted to Saint Seraphim of Sarov.

In April 1950 he was arrested on the denunciation of a fellow priest. He spent four months in the Lubyanka and Lefortovo prisons, then in Butyrka, in a cell with common criminals. On 8 October 1950 he was sentenced to seven years for anti-⁠Soviet agitation and sent to the Kargopollag camp in the Arkhangelsk region, where he felled timber and later worked in the camp bookkeeping. In 1953 he was moved to a camp section for invalids near Kuibyshev. He was released early, on 15 February 1955, but was rehabilitated only in 1989.

Parish service and monastic tonsure

He was not permitted to live in Moscow, so he served first at the Trinity Cathedral in Pskov. In 1957 he had to leave there too, and then served in village parishes of the Ryazan diocese: Troitsa-⁠Pelenitsa, Letovo, Borets, Nekrasovka and, from 1966, the church of Saint Nicholas in Kasimov. The frequent transfers, six in ten years, came from the authorities' displeasure with a priest who preached well and cared for the churches where he served. On 10 June 1966 he was tonsured a monk with the name John by Elder Seraphim Romantsov of Glinsk, now a saint.

The elder of Pskov

In 1967 Patriarch Alexy I signed his transfer to the Dormition Monastery at Pskov (the Pskov Caves), where he lived until his death. He was made hegumen in 1970 and archimandrite in 1973. Within a year believers from all over the country and from abroad began to come to him for counsel and a blessing. After the Liturgy he received people for hours, and many testify that he remembered their names and prayed for them. When he could no longer receive everyone, he answered letters; part of his correspondence has been printed, as have his sermons and the book "An Experience in Building Confession," which is based on talks he gave in the first week of Great Lent. He disliked being called an elder and said that spiritual elders are a gift of God to people. In 2001 he urged the faithful not to give way to panic over the personal tax identification number.

Repose and veneration

In 2005 he received the Order of Saint Seraphim of Sarov, first class. He reposed in the Lord on 5 February 2006, on the day of commemoration of the Council of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, aged ninety-⁠five. He was buried in the caves of the Pskov monastery, like the other monks of the community.

The faithful honour him as a preacher and confessor of all Russia. On 7 February 2021 Metropolitan Tikhon of Pskov announced that testimonies were being collected for his glorification, on a site devoted to his memory. On 10 June 2021 the first monument to the elder in Russia was unveiled in Oryol, in the grounds of the church of Saint Nicholas where he had served as a boy.