Nicholas Mogilevsky

Saint Nicholas Mogilevsky, Metropolitan of Alma-⁠Ata and Kazakhstan, was a confessor bishop of the Russian Church. He was born on 6 August 1877 in a village of the Yekaterinoslav region, in the family of a psalm-⁠reader, and fell asleep in the Lord on 25 October 1955 at Alma-⁠Ata. He passed through prisons, camps and exile, and in the hard years after the war he opened churches in Kazakhstan. The Russian Church placed him among the New Martyrs and Confessors in 2000, and his commemoration falls on 12 (25) October.

Childhood and monastic calling

The future bishop was named Theodosius at baptism, after the holy martyr Theodosius. His father, Nikifor, was a psalm-⁠reader, and his mother was called Maria. He studied at the ecclesiastical school in Yekaterinoslav (1887 to 1893) and at the seminary there (1893 to 1898). From 1898 to 1902 he served as psalm-⁠reader and then as teacher in a church school. In 1902 he resolved to become a monk and went to Nilova Pustyn. The abbot promised to receive him after a year if he did not change his mind. In 1903 he was enrolled as a novice; on 6 (19) December 1904 he was tonsured with the name Nicholas. On 27 May 1905 Archbishop Nicholas of Tver ordained him deacon in the monastery church, and on 9 October of the same year, at Tver, Bishop Alexander of Staritsa ordained him hieromonk.

Years of study and service

In 1907 he entered, out of obedience, the Moscow Theological Academy, which he finished in 1911 as candidate of theology, with the work "The Teaching of the Ascetics on the Passions". He was then assistant inspector at the academy (1911 to 1912), inspector at the Poltava seminary (1912 to 1913) and at the Chernigov seminary (1913 to 1916). In 1915 he was raised to hegumen. Between 10 October 1916 and 12 June 1917 he was, with the rank of archimandrite, abbot of the Prince Vladimir Monastery at Irkutsk and head of the missionary teachers' school there. On 12 June 1917 he became the first elected rector of the Chernigov seminary and abbot of the Yelets Dormition Monastery in the same city. In 1918, as representative of the theological schools, he took part in the All-⁠Ukrainian Church Council. At its autumn session it was decided that Archimandrite Nicholas should be bishop of Starodub, but because of illness the consecration was postponed for almost a year.

Bishop amid persecution

On 20 October 1919, at Chernigov, he was consecrated bishop of Starodub, vicar of the Chernigov diocese, by Bishops Pachomius Kedrov and John Dobroslavin. Later he thanked the Lord that the consecration took place after many of the bishops who had gathered at the Council in 1918 had already gone abroad, so that he was not in schism and did not flee, but stayed in his homeland. From 1920 he was bishop of Sosnitsa, vicar of the same diocese. From the end of 1922, for some months, he stood close to the Renovationist movement, but broke with it quickly and hid in the monastery "God's Work", attached to Nilova Pustyn.

On 6 August 1923 he was appointed bishop of Kashira, vicar of the Tula diocese, and from 19 October of the same year he administered the Tula diocese, fighting strongly against the Renovationists. In 1924 he was arrested in Moscow together with a group of bishops, among them Theodore Pozdeevsky, and spent two weeks in Butyrka prison. In 1925, when the Renovationists were preparing their council and inviting representatives of the Orthodox Church, Bishop Nicholas ordered abbots and parish councils to enter into no negotiations with them. On 8 May 1925 he was arrested and spent almost two years in prison. From 16 September 1927 he was bishop of Orel.

On 27 July 1932 he was arrested again and sent to Voronezh, and on 7 December 1932 he was sentenced to five years of deprivation of liberty. The sentence was relatively light, it is said, because in wartime he had saved a commissar from death and prevented a pogrom at Chernigov. The investigator explained the sentence to him by his popularity: people like him had to be isolated so that others would forget they existed. He was held in camps in Mordovia, Chuvashia and Sarov, and was released in 1937.

In 1941 he was raised to archbishop, most likely on 10 March, when he served the Liturgy at the Epiphany Cathedral in Moscow on the day when the locum tenens, Metropolitan Sergius, marked forty years of episcopal ministry. On 27 June 1941 he was arrested once more, held in prison at Saratov, then sent into exile for five years in Kazakhstan, first to Aktyubinsk and after three months to Chelkar. He suffered great want, and in the autumn of 1942 fell gravely ill. It is told that an unknown Tatar took him to hospital and afterwards said that God had told him to take the old man, because he had to be saved.

In October 1943 Patriarch Sergius submitted to the authorities a list of 26 clergy for whom he asked amnesty. All of them had already been shot or had died in the camps, except Nicholas Mogilevsky, yet his release still did not come. On 10 October 1944 he sent to the People's Commissar for Internal Affairs an earnest request, asking him to lift the status of "free exile", allow him to leave for Russia and take a see there at the appointment of the Patriarchal Synod. By decision of the Special Board of the NKVD of 19 May 1945 he was released early (the exile was due to end on 27 June 1946).

At Alma-⁠Ata

From 5 June 1945 he was archbishop of Alma-⁠Ata and Kazakhstan. He obtained the opening of many churches and houses of prayer and often visited the parishes of the diocese. From 1951 he governed the Semipalatinsk diocese as well, and on 4 February 1955 he was raised to metropolitan. On the 35th anniversary of his episcopal consecration, on 2 November 1954, Bishop Hermogenes Golubev of Tashkent concelebrated with him in St Nicholas Cathedral at Alma-⁠Ata. Those who knew him say he served with reverence and without haste, and wept especially at the Liturgy, at "We sing to Thee", saying that he wept for joy that the Lord had made him worthy to serve and that he could offer prayers for all his spiritual children.

From his life it is told that in July 1947 he was flying from Alma-⁠Ata to Moscow for a session of the Holy Synod. Before takeoff he blessed all the passengers, and some laughed. In flight the engine failed and the plane began to fall, and the bishop prayed all the time for the salvation of all. The plane came down in a marshy but shallow lake. When people had calmed down they came to thank him, and the pilot asked forgiveness for the mockery. The bishop answered: "God will forgive. Thank God and His Most Pure Mother, and put your hope in Saint Nicholas."

He reposed on 25 October 1955. At the funeral the faithful carried the coffin in their arms the whole way from the church to the cemetery, nearly seven kilometres, and behind it walked, by the militia's count, up to 40,000 people. He was buried in the central cemetery of Alma-⁠Ata.

After his death

At the Council of Bishops in August 2000 Metropolitan Nicholas was numbered among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, as a confessor. On 8 September 2000, with the blessing of Archbishop Alexis Kutepov of Astana and Alma-⁠Ata, his holy relics were found in the city cemetery and moved to St Nicholas Cathedral in Alma-⁠Ata. On 24 April 2012, with the blessing of Patriarch Kirill, the commemoration of the finding of the relics was entered in the calendar. In 2025 a monument to Metropolitan Nicholas was opened in the same cathedral.