Sergius Krestnikov

Holy Venerable Martyr Sergius Krestnikov was a novice of the Trinity-⁠Saint Sergius Lavra, choir director and chairman of the parish council. He was born on 1 July 1893 in Moscow and was shot on 25 April 1938. He was glorified among the saints of the Russian Church in 2002. His commemoration is on 12 April by the old calendar (25 April by the new) and in the synaxes of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, of Komi, of Moscow and of Radonezh.

It is not known for certain whether the novice Sergius received monastic tonsure, although in the investigation documents of 1936 he is sometimes called a monk-⁠priest. He was born into a working family in Moscow. He finished the parish church school and in 1905 entered the Protection Monastery. From 1915 he sang for two years in the choirs of Moscow churches, and in 1918 he entered the Trinity-⁠Saint Sergius Lavra as a novice. When the monastery was closed, in 1922, Sergius Krestnikov sang in the choir of the Pyatnitskaya church in Sergiev Posad. In 1928 he became psalmist, watchman and chairman of the church council at the church in the Kukuevo cemetery of Sergiev Posad, where the elder of the Zosima Hermitage, Hieroschemamonk Alexei (Solovyov), was buried.

On 21 October 1935 he was arrested by the political police, together with former monks of the Trinity Lavra and city priests, and held in the Butyrka prison. On 8 January 1936 the Special Council of the political police found him guilty under article 58 and sentenced him to five years in a labour camp, at Ukhtpechlag (the town of Chibyu, Komi ASSR). On 21 January 1938 he was arrested again, as a participant in a group that carried on, among the prisoners, counter-⁠revolutionary activity aimed at discrediting the party and the government. On 15 March 1938 the three-⁠man tribunal sentenced him to death. He was shot on 25 April 1938 and buried in an unknown common grave.

On 15 December 1989 he was rehabilitated by the prosecutor's office of the Moscow region. On 26 December 2002, at a session of the Holy Synod of the Russian Church, on the proposal of the Moscow diocese, the novice Sergius Krestnikov was numbered among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia. The day of his commemoration was set as 12 (25) April.