Pachomius Rusin

Saint Pachomius Rusin, a hieromonk and venerable martyr (in the world Prokhor Petrovich Rusin), was born in 1880 in Kursk province. In 1910 he moved to Kazakhstan and entered the Holy Trinity Monastery at Issyk-⁠Kul. After the monastery was ravaged in 1916 he founded, with four monks, a skete in the Aksai gorge.

The Issyk-⁠Kul monastery had been founded in 1882 by Bishop Alexander Kulchitsky as a missionary centre of Turkestan. In 1916 many aged monks were tortured in an attack on it, and in 1919 it was closed. Father Pachomius had been transferred before 1916 to the city of Verny (today Almaty) and became bound to the monks Seraphim Bogoslovsky, Theognost Pivovarov, Anatoly and Heraclius; he is venerated with them in the Synaxis of the Martyrs of Verny.

In 1921 three Red Army men came to the skete at Kyzyl-⁠Zhar and killed Father Seraphim and Father Theognost in the night, after which Father Pachomius, Father Heraclius and Father Anatoly did not stay in the skete. Pachomius hid in the mountains, serving in secret, and lived for a time in concealment with the pilgrim Victor Matveev on Mount Gorelnik in the Medeo gorge. He was silent, and to those who asked him for a word of guidance he told them to say the Jesus Prayer.

In 1935 he was arrested, given three years of camp and held in the Alma-⁠Ata prison, where he suffered abuse. He was shot on the charge of counter-⁠revolutionary agitation. The page gives two dates for his end: 1936 in the main text, and 1938, after a new arrest in the camp, in the opening summary.

The grave of Saints Seraphim and Theognost in the Aksai gorge has always been venerated by the faithful; in 1991 a cross and then a small chapel were set up over it, and healings are reported there. On the site of the Kyzyl-⁠Zhar skete a men's monastery has opened, the Aksai Hermitage of Saints Seraphim and Theognost. The martyrs were glorified locally in 1993 in the Diocese of Alma-⁠Ata and canonized by the Jubilee Council of Bishops in August 2000. Pachomius is commemorated on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, and on 11 August and 8 September in the Synaxis of the Saints of the Central Asian Metropolitan District, in the new style.