Maria Korepova

Holy Confessor Maria Korepova was born on 9 August 1877 in a peasant family, in the village of Maurino in the Vologda province, with the full name Maria Andreevna Korepova. Until 1919 she lived in her native village with her parents, unmarried.

From 1919 to 1927 she was a nun of the women's monastery of the Transfiguration, Sebastianov, at Sokhota (Poshekhonye district, Yaroslavl province), where she struggled until it was closed. Maria is probably her monastic name. After the monastery was closed she was forced to move to Poshekhonye-⁠Volodarsk and settled there with other expelled nuns. At first she worked by the day as a farm labourer, and shortly before her arrest she managed to get a post as a hospital orderly.

She was arrested on 15 August 1936, accused as a member of a "Tikhonite" group, of counter-⁠revolutionary agitation, of spreading rumours of famine and of slandering Soviet power. At all questionings she behaved self-⁠sacrificingly and firmly, categorically denying any part in activity against the state and without betraying any of those arrested with her. On 15 August 1937 the NKVD troika of the Yaroslavl region sentenced her to five years of labour camp. She served the sentence in Sevvostlag (Far Eastern territory, Nagaevo bay) from 27 October 1937 to 18 May 1942, when she was released at the end of the term.

In a certificate of 1949 of the Poshekhonye-⁠Volodarsk department of the MGB she is listed as dead. The exact date of death and place of burial are unknown. She was numbered among the saints on 20 August 2000, by the Council of Bishops of the Russian Church (13-16 August 2000), on the proposal of the Yaroslavl diocese. She is commemorated on 1 September, in the new style, on 5 June in the Synaxis of the Saints of Rostov and Yaroslavl and on the movable day around 7 February in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church.