Pachomius Turkevich

Saint Pachomius Turkevich, an abbot and venerable martyr, was born in 1864 in the village of Milyanovichi in the Kovel district of Volhynia, in a blacksmith's family, and in the world was named Pavel Akimovich Turkevich. He lived at the Zlatoust Monastery in Moscow until it was closed in 1923. At the end of the twenties and the beginning of the thirties, being old, he lived in Moscow with his spiritual children.

In 1937 he was arrested in the same group as Archbishop Dimitry Dobroserdov, Archimandrite Ambrose Astakhov, the deacon John Khrenov, the monk Varlaam Efimov, the nun Tatiana and the laypeople Nikolai Rein, Maria Volnukhina and Nadezhda Azhgerevich. At his interrogation Father Pachomius said openly that he regarded Soviet power as the power of the antichrist, sent by God to the people as a punishment.

On 17 October 1937 an NKVD troika sentenced them all to death. Abbot Pachomius was shot on 21 October 1937 at the Butovo range near Moscow together with the others, and was buried in an unknown common grave.

He is commemorated on 29 May (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo, on 5 September (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow, and on 21 October, the day of his killing, in the new style.