Naum Baiborodin

Archimandrite Naum Baiborodin (in the world Nikolai Alexandrovich, 1927-2017) was a confessor of the Trinity Lavra of Saint Sergius, regarded by many as an elder. He is venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization; opinions about him are not unanimous.

He was born on 19 December 1927 in the village of Shubinka, in the Novosibirsk region, to Alexander and Pelagia Baiborodin, and was baptised on 25 December in the church of Saint Sergius in the village. The family moved to the Primorye region, and he finished only nine grades. In October 1944 he was conscripted and served in aviation technical units at Frunze, Riga, Kaliningrad and Šiauliai; he was discharged in 1952 with the rank of senior sergeant. He then completed evening school and in 1953 entered the physics and mathematics faculty of the Polytechnic Institute in Frunze.

In 1957 he came to Zagorsk (Sergiev Posad), where he enrolled at the Moscow Theological Seminary, and on 14 October he was received into the brotherhood of the Trinity Lavra. On 14 August 1958 he was tonsured a monk by the abbot, Archimandrite Pimen Khmelevsky, with the name Naum, in honour of Saint Naum of Radonezh. He was ordained hierodeacon on 8 October 1958, the feast of Saint Sergius, and hieromonk on 8 October 1959, in the Dormition Cathedral of the Lavra. After the seminary (1960) he attended the Moscow Theological Academy, graduating as candidate of theology with a thesis on the degrees of perfection in prayer according to the Philokalia. He was raised to hegumen in 1970 and to archimandrite at Pascha in 1979.

In 1996 he helped to build, in his native village, the convent of the Holy Archangel Michael. From 2000 he was a member of the Spiritual Council of the Lavra, and from 2001 patron of the Lavra's children's home at Toporkovo. Many believers came to him for confession and counsel, and some say that they owe their church life to him. Others, among them journalists and former novices, have criticised the way he conducted confession and spoken of his influence in some convents; these opinions remain disputed.

From 2016 he lay in a coma because of cerebral edema. He reposed in the Lord on the morning of 13 October 2017, in a hospital in Moscow, and the funeral service was served on 15 October in the Dormition Cathedral of the Lavra.