Paphnutius Kostin

Saint Paphnutius Kostin, a hieromonk of Optina and a venerable martyr, was born in 1866 in the village of Pobednoe in the Mtsensk district of Oryol province, in the family of the peasant Feodor Kostin, and at baptism was named Boris. He studied at the village school and, as the youngest child, received his father's blessing to go to a monastery. He entered Optina Monastery and was tonsured a monk on 5 August 1900, at the age of thirty-⁠four, with the name Paphnutius. On 23 August 1904 he was ordained hierodeacon and on 8 August 1910 hieromonk.

On 26 June 1914 he was sent as a priest to the headquarters of the 8th brigade of the State Militia of the Moscow Military District. After the First World War he returned to the monastery and served there until its final closure in 1923. Driven out of the community, he settled in the village of Sosenka in the Kozelsk district of Kaluga region and performed services at the peasants' request.

In 1937 he visited his native place, perhaps thinking to stay there to the end of his life; he was already ill with tuberculosis. Learning that he was being watched and that NKVD agents had asked about the visiting monk, he returned to Sosenka. There he fell gravely ill and, during his illness, on 13 December 1937, he was arrested and held in the cell of the Kozelsk district NKVD. In the same days a priest's wife, the warden of the church in Kozelsk and six nuns and novices of Shamordino Convent were arrested, accused of illegal religious gatherings and counter-⁠revolutionary agitation. At his interrogation Father Paphnutius denied all the charges.

The indictment was drawn up on 16 December 1937, and on 5 January 1938 the NKVD troika sentenced him to be shot; the women were released in February 1938. Hieromonk Paphnutius was shot at dawn on the feast of Theophany, 19 January 1938, and buried in an unknown common grave.

He is commemorated on 21 January, on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, on 31 July in the Synaxis of the Saints of Kaluga and on 24 October in the Synaxis of all the Saints of Optina, all in the new style.