Savva of Moshok

Righteous Savva of Moshok was a priest of the Russian Orthodox Church, cleric of the church of Saint John the Theologian in the village of Moshok (today in the Sudogda district, Vladimir region), who died on 5 December 1592. Almost nothing certain is known about his life. He was canonized in 1982, as part of the Synaxis of the Saints of Vladimir, among the righteous, and so by a local decision. He is commemorated on 5 (18) December. The record also gives 23 June, which the source does not show.

He served in the church of the Apostle John the Theologian in the village of Moshok. According to local tradition, by his blessing a wonderworking copy of the Kazan icon of the Mother of God was brought from Kazan to the church. According to the life published on the site of the Sudogda deanery, he saved people, with God's help, by his ascetic and self-⁠sacrificing life, unceasing prayer and fasting; he was a true shepherd, who prayed for the sick, comforted the unfortunate and urged people to true and fervent faith in God, strengthening many in the faith, waging unbroken struggle against apostasy. A painters' manual of the eighteenth century which belonged to G. D. Filimonov describes him thus: sacred priest, new wonderworker of Vladimir, grey of appearance, with a beard like that of Blaise, in priest's vestments.

Archdeacon Andrei Kuraev calls this canonization the first case of the entry into the calendar of a non-⁠monastic priest (apart from martyrs and fools for Christ). The veneration of Saint Savva began to revive at Moshok with the restoration, at the end of 1990, of the Dormition parish. In 2002 an icon of the righteous priest Savva of Moshok was painted and a troparion, kontakion and prayer to the saint were composed, as well as his life, based on the researches of local historians of Murom and on oral traditions among pious laity of Moshok. In 2010, with the blessing of Metropolitan Evlogy of Vladimir and Suzdal, his life was issued as a separate booklet, which quickly sold out. On 23 October 2011 a side chapel in honour of the righteous priest Savva was consecrated in the Dormition church of Moshok, and Metropolitan Evlogy gave his blessing for an akathist to the saint to be composed. In September 2012 the akathist was blessed for liturgical use in the Dormition parish of Moshok. In 2012 the 420th anniversary of his repose was marked at Moshok; the festal service was celebrated with a procession. In 2014 the akathist was published by the publishing department of the Vladimir diocese together with the life of Saint Savva of Moshok and the text of an Abridged Catechism of the nineteenth century.