Leontius Kargin

Holy Leontius Kargin was a monk of Zilantov Monastery in Kazan and was killed in 1918, together with his spiritual father, Archimandrite Sergius. The Church honours him among the venerable martyrs of Zilantov, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Kazan.

Born Lavrenty Karyagin (in 1870), he was a peasant of the Kazan province. He was a novice at the Raifa monastery from 1901 to February 1907, and then at the Makaryev hermitage, from where he was moved to Zilantov. He was tonsured a monk on 20 December 1909, six months after the transfer. In the summer of 1918 the monastery's brotherhood numbered only eleven: Archimandrite Sergius, the hieromonks Lavrenty, Joseph and Seraphim, the hierodeacon Theodosius, the monks Leontius and Stephen, and four novices.

After the city of Kazan was occupied by the White Czechs and then taken by the Red Army, the brothers were driven out of the refectory, lined up against the wall of the monastery courtyard and shot in rifle volleys, with Archimandrite Sergius at their head. Only the hieromonk Joseph survived; he crawled out from under the bodies of the others and made his way to the city.