Pachomius of Kena

Venerable Pachomius of Kena was a Russian monk, a disciple of Venerable Alexander of Oshevensk, who founded at the end of the fifteenth century the Transfiguration hermitage on the river Kena, in what is now the Arkhangelsk region. He lived from about 1450 to about 1515.

He was tonsured a monk at the monastery of the Dormition and of Alexander of Oshevensk. On the river Kena he founded the hermitage of the Saviour and the Transfiguration and was its first abbot. In his monastery he set up a hospital for infirm elders.

In 1508 Venerable Anthony of Siya was tonsured at the Kena monastery. The relics of Pachomius rest hidden, under a covering, in the church he built.

His commemoration, as wonderworker of Kena, is kept on the first Saturday after Theophany. One list also gives 21 May. Several churches and side altars in the dioceses of Olonets and Arkhangelsk were dedicated to him: a side altar of the church of Saint Nicholas in the Kena parish in 1867 (no longer standing), a chapel in the village of Karpova Gora in the Plesetsk district, raised in the nineteenth century, and others. In the village of Shelokhovskaya in the Kargopol district a church dedicated to him is planned.