Sergius Uklonsky

Holy Hieromartyr Sergius Uklonsky was an archpriest in the Moscow and Tver regions and was shot on 19 September 1937, at the age of seventy-⁠four. He was canonized at the Jubilee Council of Bishops in 2000.

Priest and dean

He was born on 5 May 1864 in the village of Tesovo, in the family of the priest Michael Uklonsky, and graduated from the Bethany Seminary. In 1888 he was ordained priest for the church of the village of Rassudovo, Podolsk district, and at the beginning of the twentieth century he served at the church of the Protection in the village of Kulikovo, Dmitrov district. In 1921 Bishop Seraphim (Zvezdinsky) of Dmitrov, a hieromartyr, raised him to archpriest and named him dean of the eighth district. After the arrest of Bishop Seraphim and the seizure of church authority by the Renovationists, Father Sergius did all in his power to resist the pressure of the "Living Church". Because he did not appear at the meeting of deans called by the Renovationist administration, he was dismissed from the office of dean on 6 March 1923. He gathered the clergy of his district, and the meeting rejected the Renovationist changes and the Renovationist dean. On 17 April the Renovationist administration resolved to bring his attention to it and told him that if he went on discharging the duties of dean on his own, he would be removed.

The last years

In 1924 he moved to the church in the village of Chernevo, Dmitrov district. In the early thirties he was forced to leave for Tver province, where he served in the village of Aleshenka near Bologoye and then in the village of Novoe on the Volga. On 29 January 1931, aged sixty-⁠seven, he was tried for non-⁠payment of tax and sentenced to a year of forced labour; at the same time his son died, after exile. By 1937 he looked like an aged man. On 26 February 1937 he was moved to the church in the village of Mshentsy, Bologoye district. He urged his parishioners to pray, to confess, to fast and to baptize their children, went to the peasants' homes, spoke of the faith and baptized. People came to his services from neighbouring villages and from farther away, and nuns from the closed monasteries came too. On the local feast of the Ninth Friday clergy of the neighbouring churches gathered. Before Pascha he asked the nuns to go round the villagers and gather consent for his visit on the feast day, so as to ask permission afterwards from the council. He was over seventy and so hungry that he was ready to go from house to house for alms. The chairman of the village council wrote a report, and on 2 September 1937 he was arrested. The NKVD troika of the region sentenced him to death, and the sentence was carried out on 19 September 1937.

The saint is commemorated on 22 September and, in the new style, on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, on 18 July (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Tver and on 5 September (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow.