Maria Laktionova

Holy Venerable Martyr Maria Laktionova, a novice, was born on 26 January 1884 in the village of Gnezdilovo in the Fatezh district of the Kursk region, with the full name Maria Maximovna Laktionova. It is known that from 1914 to 1918 she was a novice at the Kazan Ambrose Hermitage (village of Shamordino, Peremyshl district, Kaluga province), and from 1934 she lived in Belev.

On 16 December 1937 she was arrested by the Belev department of the NKVD in the case of Bishop Nikita (Pribytkov) and accused of having "belonged to an underground monastery". At the questioning the same day, the novice Maria said to the investigator: "I know of no monastery. I have never gone against the authorities." On 30 December 1937 the NKVD troika of the Tula region sentenced her to the supreme penalty, shooting. The sentence was carried out on 8 January 1938, and the martyr's burial place was a common grave at the 162nd kilometre of the Simferopol highway.

She is commemorated on 8 January, the day of her death, in the new style, on 5 October in the Synaxis of the Saints of Tula and on the movable day around 7 February in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church.