Simeon Afonkin

Holy Hieromartyr Simeon Afonkin was a priest in Kaskelen in Kazakhstan and was shot on 8 December 1937.

Semyon Ivanovich Afonkin was born on 13 February 1870 in the village of Obrochnoe, Krasnaya Sloboda district, Penza province. Father Simeon served as a priest in the town of Kaskelen in Kazakhstan and honourably bore the struggle of pastoral care in those hard years. In canonical communion with Archbishop Tikhon (Sharapov) of Alma-⁠Ata, living almost illegally, he was compelled to serve not in a church but in a prayer house. On 24 November 1937 he was arrested and accused of spreading anti-⁠Soviet propaganda among the inhabitants of Kaskelen, instilling religious convictions, of saying about the new constitution that it was given not for the whole people but for a certain category of men, and of slandering the Soviet government by saying that Christians had been enserfed and driven into the collective farms, where the people were mocked. He did not admit guilt. The troika attached to the NKVD administration of the Alma-⁠Ata region sentenced him to the supreme penalty, and on 8 December 1937 he was shot.

He is commemorated on 8 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.