Sergius Felitsyn

Holy Hieromartyr Sergius Felitsyn was a priest of the church of the Resurrection in the village of Sertyakino, in the Podolsk district, and was shot at Butovo on 15 December 1937.

He was born on 18 February 1883 in the village of Voronovo, Podolsk district, in the family of the priest Basil Felitsyn. He finished the Perervinsky school and three classes at the Moscow Seminary, and in 1904 was appointed psalm-⁠reader at the church of the Transfiguration in Buzharovo. In 1907 he was moved to the church of the Resurrection in Sertyakino, where he married Vera Sergeevna Osetrova, and they had eight children. In 1918 he was ordained deacon and in 1921 priest for the same church, where he served until the day of his arrest, receiving the epigonation and the kamilavka. The parish included the village of Sertyakino and the hamlets of Maloe and Bolshoe Tolbino and Nikulino, five kilometres from the church. The parishioners remembered him above all for his Christian kindness.

On 27 November 1937, at two in the night, he was arrested and imprisoned at Serpukhov. The arrest shook his wife so much that she lost her voice and answered by signs the NKVD men who wanted to be shown the places they were to search. The priest was accused of being hostile to Soviet power and of having close ties with a counter-⁠revolutionary kulak named Zarenkov. He was questioned at once; he said he had spoken nothing against the authorities and the party among the people, and he did not admit guilt of anti-⁠Soviet agitation. On 1 December an NKVD troika sentenced him to death, and Father Sergius was shot on 15 December 1937 and buried in an unknown common grave at the Butovo range.

He is commemorated on 15 December 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.