Seraphim Tyapochkin

Archimandrite Seraphim Tyapochkin (in the world Dimitry Alexandrovich, 1894-1982) was a confessor and rector of the church of Saint Nicholas at Rakitnoye, in the Belgorod region. He is venerated by the faithful as an elder, without synodal canonization; materials are being prepared for his canonization.

He was born on 1 (13) August 1894 in the town of Novy Dvor, Warsaw province, into a noble family. At seven he entered the church school, in 1911 the seminary at Chelm, where the rector, Archimandrite Seraphim Ostroumov, deeply influenced him, and then, as the best pupil, the Moscow Theological Academy (1917-1919), which closed in the spring of 1919. He married in 1920 and in the same year was ordained deacon and, on 18 October, priest by Bishop Evlampy of Yekaterinoslav, in the Tikhvin Convent in Yekaterinoslav. From 1921 he served in the village of Mikhailovka, as dean of the Solonianka district, until 1936. He defended the purity of Orthodox teaching against Renovationism and other anti-⁠church movements. In 1933 his wife died of tuberculosis, leaving him with three minor daughters.

In 1940 he was arrested for secretly celebrating services at home and received ten years' imprisonment, served at Igarka in the Krasnoyarsk region. After his release, in 1950, he was given four more years of exile in Kazakhstan near Lake Balkhash; the exile was lifted in 1955 at the request of his son-⁠in-⁠law. He then served at Verkhny Tokmak, then at Mikhailovka, and in 1960 at the cathedral of Dnepropetrovsk, from which the authorities drove him out because people came to him. He slept a month in a railway station; in the end Bishop Leonid Polyakov received him into the diocese of Kursk and Belgorod, at the Dormition church in Sokolovka.

On 26 October 1960 Bishop Leonid tonsured him a monk with the name Seraphim, in honour of Saint Seraphim of Sarov, whom he had held as his protector since childhood. He was made hegumen in 1961. On 14 October 1961 he was appointed rector of the church of Saint Nicholas at Rakitnoye in the Belgorod region, where he remained until his death; he became archimandrite in 1970. He loved the services and celebrated them with a strict reverence for the order of the Church, in trembling awe at the altar, and slept very little. He passed to the Lord in silence on 19 April 1982, on the second day of the Resurrection of the Lord.

Hundreds of people came to the funeral, despite the obstacles placed by the authorities, who cancelled the buses to Rakitnoye. His grave is beside the church of Saint Nicholas. Believers tell of healings and clairvoyance through his prayers. In 2007 a monument to him was unveiled at Rakitnoye, with his words: he who abides in God abides in love. The canonization commission of the Belgorod and Stary Oskol diocese has been gathering testimonies and memories since 1996, and in December 2018 the Belgorod Metropolia sent the Patriarch the materials needed for examination.