Sergius Belokurov

Holy Hieromartyr Sergius Belokurov was a priest of the church of the Holy Trinity in Ramenskoe near Moscow, remembered also as a healer of bodily ills, and he was shot at Butovo on 7 March 1938.

He was born on 24 September 1880 in the town of Volokolamsk, in the family of the psalm-⁠reader Ivan Belokurov of the Resurrection cathedral. He finished the ecclesiastical school of Volokolamsk in 1895 and the Bethany Seminary in 1902, and then taught at the parish school of the Joseph of Volokolamsk Monastery. His father died in 1904; that same year he was ordained deacon and served at the church of the Holy Trinity in Ramenskoe. In 1919 he was ordained priest for the same church.

Almost at once after his ordination he was called up into the Red Army. Father Sergius asked to be exempted, and his parishioners supported him, pointing out that he was not only a priest but also a good doctor who had helped many people in the district, and that with doctors scarce they wished to keep him. On 19 July 1920 the court decided to release him from military service, leaving him free to treat the villagers of Ramenskoe. From then on he served again in his church.

On 17 February 1938 a local informer stated that he had said one must hurry to live, since Soviet power would crush one tomorrow if not today. Father Sergius was arrested on 22 February and questioned three days later. He said that he and two other church servants gathered after every liturgy in the church gatehouse, where they spoke of the business of the services and of a tax that was too heavy, but he did not admit guilt of anti-⁠Soviet talk. On 27 February an NKVD troika sentenced him to death. He was taken to Taganka, shot on 7 March 1938 and buried in an unknown common grave at the Butovo range.

The saint is commemorated on 7 March and, in the new style, on 29 May (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo and on 5 September (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow.