Sergius Brednikov

Holy Hieromartyr Sergius Brednikov was a priest in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan and received the crown of martyrdom by shooting on 10 December 1937.

Sergius Alexandrovich Brednikov was born in the city of Verny, in the Semirechye region, that is, in present-⁠day Almaty in Kazakhstan. From 1907 to 1914 he served as a psalm-⁠reader, and in 1915 he was ordained priest. He served at the church of the town of Kara-⁠Kol in Kyrgyzstan. In 1930 he was arrested and sentenced to three years of exile, which he spent in the town of Taldykorgan. Unlike many exiled priests, for whom the climate of Kazakhstan was unfamiliar and sometimes deadly, Father Sergius, being a native of the region, adapted well. After his term he stayed in Taldykorgan and carried out his pastoral duties with zeal.

On 24 November 1937 he was arrested again, on a charge of anti-⁠Soviet agitation and of spreading counter-⁠revolutionary rumours. On 1 December the troika attached to the NKVD administration of the Alma-⁠Ata region sentenced him to the supreme penalty, and on 10 December 1937 the saint was shot.

He is commemorated on 10 December and, in the new style, on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church.