Sergius Vershinin of Belogorye

Holy Venerable Martyr Sergius Vershinin of Belogorye was a hieromonk of the Belogorsky Monastery in the Perm region and died a martyr in August 1918 with his abbot and many brethren.

The monastery on the White Mountain was founded by Archimandrite Barlaam, in the world Basil Efimovich Konoplev, born in 1858 into a family of priestless Old Believers. After years of searching for the true Church, in the 1890s he joined Orthodoxy by chrismation, together with his father, brothers and sister, nineteen people in all. Tonsured a monk in 1894 and ordained hierodeacon and hieromonk, he led the missionary monastery, later called the "Athos of the Urals", restored the service according to the typikon and valued preaching. In June 1917 the cathedral of the monastery was consecrated.

In August 1918 the Bolsheviks took the monastery, defiled the altar of the cathedral and turned the icon workshop into a theatre, where the boys of the choir were forced to sing worldly songs. Many monks were tormented and killed. On 12 (25) August they arrested Archimandrite Barlaam and shot him on the road to Osa. Among the monks killed are the hieromonks Sergius, Elijah, Vyacheslav, Joasaph, John and Anthony, the hierodeacons Micah, Bessarion, Matthew and Euthymius, the monks Barnabas, Dimitri, Sabbas, Hermogenes, Arcadius, Euthymius and Marcellus, and novices. Their graves are unknown. Of Hieromonk Sergius Vershinin the sources consulted preserve nothing beyond his name in the list of the slain.

They were glorified in 1998 as saints of the Perm diocese and in August 2000, at the Jubilee Council of Bishops, numbered among the New Martyrs and Confessors. Sergius is commemorated on 25 August (12 August in the old style), on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors and on 14 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Perm, in the new style.