Sepfora of Klykovo

Schemanun Sepphora of Klykovo (in the world Darya Nikolaevna Shnyakina, née Senyakina) was a nun and elder of the Russian Orthodox Church, born on 19 March 1896 in the village of Glukhovo in the Tambov province and fallen asleep on 13 May 1997 at Klykovo, in the Kaluga region. Our sources show no canonization: the Synodal Commission for canonization is now examining the proposal to number her among the saints, on the basis of wide veneration by the people, of miracles and of prophecies. Our calendar remembers her on 13 May.

Family and first trials

She was born into a peasant family with many children, that of Nikolai and Matrona Senyakin, and was named Darya. Of their thirteen children three survived: Darya and two brothers. One was killed in the war, in 1914, the other at the beginning of the 1930s, in the time of the dispossession of the kulaks. After her father's death, in 1916, Darya married a villager, Dmitry Shnyakin. They had two daughters, Alexandra (1917) and Paraskeva (1922), and a son, who died in infancy. In 1933 they were dispossessed as kulaks: their house was pulled down and they had nowhere to live. A little earlier her husband had gone to work at Bolokhovo. Darya moved with the children to him and they lived there until the Second World War. In 1950 her husband died, and the family moved to the settlement of Kireevsk.

The nun

By her own account, once, during a prayer in solitude, she had a vision: angels performed over her the rite of monastic tonsure. Coming to confession at the Lavra of the Holy Trinity of Saint Sergius, she told of this wonderful vision. There too, on 20 October 1967, at the age of seventy-⁠one, she was tonsured into the mantle, with the name Dosithea. Mother Dosithea settled at Sergiev Posad, with her daughter Alexandra, but often returned to Kireevsk. Many people came to the nun Dosithea for counsel. In December 1989 Metropolitan Serapion of Tula and Belev tonsured her into the schema with the name Sepphora.

At Klykovo

On Christmas Eve 1996 the schemanun Sepphora moved from Kireevsk to Klykovo. The elder left her cell only to go to church. To her came monks from Optina, nuns from Shamordino and novices, and sufferers from all over Russia. She fell asleep on 13 May 1997 and was buried in the Saviour Not-⁠Made-⁠by-⁠Hands hermitage, beside the altar of the Saint Nicholas side chapel of the church of the Saviour Not-⁠Made-⁠by-⁠Hands.