Meletius Yakimov

Saint Meletius (in the world Mikhail Kuzmich Yakimov, 1835-1900), a hierarch, was Bishop of Ryazan and Zaraysk, first a missionary in Siberia and Bishop of Yakutsk, a spiritual writer, a renewer of work for lepers and a builder of churches. He is venerated as a local saint in several Russian dioceses. He is commemorated on 10 June.

Beginnings

He was born in the village of Nema in the Nolinsk district of Vyatka province, to the priest Kosma Pavlovich Yakimov and Alexandra Kapitonovna, born Ryazanova, who later founded the Mother of God community in Chita, which became a monastery. He studied at the schools of Nolinsk and Vyatka and graduated from the Vyatka seminary in 1856. He was a novice at Saint Tryphon's Monastery in Vyatka, was tonsured a rassophore in 1857 and taught sacred history and chant at the church school in Vyatka. In 1858 he entered the Kazan Theological Academy. On 1 February 1859 he was tonsured a monk with the name Meletius and then ordained hierodeacon.

In 1861 the Holy Synod expelled him from the academy, punishing him for serving a memorial service for the peasants of the village of Bezdna, killed in the suppression of an uprising. Professor Shchapov was arrested in the same case. He was sent as a missionary to the Transfiguration Monastery at Posolsk, on Lake Baikal.

Missionary in Siberia

He reached the monastery in June 1862 and was assigned as missionary among the Buryats of the Selenga region and the third Buryat cavalry brigade. Ordained hieromonk in December 1862, he wrote there a work for which in 1865 he received the degree of candidate of theology. From 1872 he was a missionary on the Mongolian border, among Buryats and Tungus, in 1873 he was named head of the Irkutsk section of the mission and abbot of the Nilova Hermitage in the Sayan mountains, and in 1874 he was raised to archimandrite. On 5 November 1878 he was consecrated Bishop of Selenga, vicar of the Irkutsk diocese, with the title of head of the spiritual mission in Transbaikalia, centred in Chita.

Bishop of Yakutsk and Ryazan

On 5 July 1889 he was appointed Bishop of Yakutsk and Vilyuisk. A great problem of the diocese was the lepers, who lived isolated in the taiga. He studied their living conditions closely and started the publication in the diocesan gazette of an article by the doctor K. V. Nesmelov on leprosy, which had a great response. Volunteers and donors from Russia and abroad joined the effort. The English nurse Kate Marsden came to Yakutsk and began the building of a colony for lepers near Vilyuisk. Later three nurses and the doctor D. S. Gimer came from Moscow. He also consecrated fourteen new churches, founded the Christ the Saviour brotherhood, built the diocesan girls' school with a house church (1892), opened many parish schools and supported the founding of the regional museum.

On 14 October 1896 he was appointed Bishop of Ryazan and Zaraysk and arrived on 17 February 1897, though illness weakened him. He served with apostolic zeal, meekness and Christian love, and where in Yakutsk he had had eighty churches in his care, in Ryazan there were more than a thousand. He reposed in 1900 and was buried in the Archangel Cathedral in the Ryazan kremlin. He left works of church history and mission, among them an instruction for the newly baptized in the Buryat language, collections of church documents from Eastern Siberia and a work on Orthodoxy in Dauria, Mongolia and China.

Veneration

In 1984, on the proposal of Bishop Maxim of Omsk, with the blessing of Patriarch Pimen, he was glorified in the synaxis of Siberian saints, and in 1987 the patriarch included him in the synaxis of the saints of Ryazan. On 18 June 1998 his incorrupt relics were found, moved in 1998 to the Holy Trinity Monastery in Ryazan and in 2004 to the Nativity Cathedral in Ryazan. He is a locally venerated saint of the Ryazan, Lipetsk, Siberian, Irkutsk and Yakutsk dioceses. His commemoration is on 10 June, and on other days the day of his repose and the finding of his relics.