Maxim Popov

Venerable martyr Maxim (born Methodius Grigorievich Popov, 1876 to 1934) was a hieromonk of the Russian Orthodox Church, a peasant who became a monk after his wife's death, sentenced to exile for praying in public and who died in a camp in the Arkhangelsk region. He was canonized in 2000 by the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church, among the new martyrs and confessors of Russia.

Family

He was born on 17 June 1876 in the village of Bolshoy Surmet, in the Buguruslan district, Samara province, in a well-⁠off and believing peasant family. His father was the warden of a church being built in the village, dedicated to the holy unmercenary physicians Cosmas and Damian. There were five children, of whom four became monks. In 1900 he married Elena Timofeevna Polyakova and they had six children, between 1902 and 1916. According to the Ukrainian source, a deeply devout man, he made several pilgrimages to the holy places of Russia, among them on foot to the Caves Lavra, and had great authority among his fellow villagers. After the revolution, in the time of war communism, the family's food, cattle and tools were taken. In 1922, during the typhus epidemic, he was widowed, also losing his father; after his wife's death he vowed not to marry again and resolved to become a monk.

Monk and persecution

In 1926, at the Vladimir monastery in Kamenka, Bishop John (Poyarkov) of Davlekanovo, who administered the diocese of Ufa, tonsured him a monk with the name Maxim and ordained him hieromonk. From 1926 he served at the church of the Saint Sergius convent in the Belebey district. In the winter of 1927 to 1928 the convent was closed, a colony for homeless children being set up in it, but Father Maxim and twelve nuns were allowed to serve in the church. In 1929 the church was closed. From 1930 he served at the church of Saint Elijah in the village of Ryabash, in Bashkiria, without a home, living with believers of the parish.

On 17 September 1931 he was arrested at Belebey, where he had come to pray at the feast of the Tabynsk icon of the Mother of God. The cause of the arrest was the denunciation by a journalist of the newspaper "Proletarian Thought", who showed "revolutionary vigilance": seeing in the market a priest and a nun, the journalist suspected Father Maxim of agitation among the peasants and informed the militia. He was sentenced to five years of exile. For a year he was in the prison at Belebey, then for three years in the camp in the village of Navoloki, Kholmogory district, Arkhangelsk region. He died in 1934 in the camp, of pneumonia. Before his death a resident of Navoloki, Maslov, cared for him and also buried him. He was rehabilitated in 1989 by the prosecutor's office of Bashkiria. In 2000 he was canonized by the Council of Bishops.