Jonah the Athonite

Venerable Martyr Jonah the Athonite, in the world Ivan Andreevich Shankov, was born on 20 July 1879 in the village of Soltsino in the Ryazan region of Russia, into a pious merchant family. His father, Andrei Nikitich, traded in grain in Moscow. When Ivan was eleven his mother fell gravely ill and went with him to her native village, where she died. He then returned to his father in Moscow, finished his schooling and began to work in trade.

The young man's heart was drawn neither to trade nor to family life. His family had a custom of dedicating one child to the service of God, and Ivan wished to go to Athos and become a monk. In 1897, at eighteen, he came to Mount Athos and entered the Monastery of Saint Panteleimon as a novice. He was tonsured a rassophore with the name Jonah, received the mantle in 1902, and was ordained deacon in 1905 and priest-⁠monk in 1913. His obedience was in the chancery, and from March 1914 he was sent to the monastery's dependency in Constantinople. In July 1914, when all Russians were expelled from the city, he left it.

In Russia he was assigned to the monastery's dependency in Odessa and served there until 1923, when the atheist authorities closed it. He then served at the Annunciation church in Odessa until it too was closed in 1927, and afterwards at the All Saints cemetery church, closed in 1930. That same year he received a letter from home: the priest of the village of Alpatevo, a few kilometres from Soltsino, had died, and the villagers invited him to serve their church. Father Jonah went and served there until his arrest.

At the end of 1937, in the wave of persecution against the Russian Church, the NKVD began collecting testimony against him. Witnesses said that in 1937 the closing of the church and the handing of the building over to a school had been proposed, that he had informed the believers, who came to the meeting and prevented it, and that he had spoken against the authorities. On 24 February 1938 he was arrested and held in Kolomna. He refused to sign the arrest order. At his interrogations he rejected the charge of counter-⁠revolutionary propaganda.

On 7 June 1938 the NKVD troika sentenced him to death. He was taken to Moscow, to the Taganka prison, where he was photographed on 13 June. He was shot on 4 July 1938 and buried in a common grave at the Butovo firing ground near Moscow. He is commemorated on 4 July in the calendar of the Church of Greece (new style).