Simeon Lileev

Holy Hieromartyr Simeon Lileev was an archpriest in the village of Zabolotye near Moscow and was shot at Butovo on 13 October 1937, after his church had been closed and he had pleaded for its reopening.

He was born on 2 February 1873 in the village of Maloe Alexino, Alexandrov district, Vladimir province. His father, Peter Lileev, had been a psalm-⁠reader and then a deacon in the village. In 1887 he finished the ecclesiastical school at Pereslavl and entered the seminary; in 1893 he finished the Bethany Seminary and for five years was a teacher at the zemstvo school of Alexino. In 1898 he was ordained priest at the church of Saint Nicholas in the village of Deryuzino near Sergiev Posad, and in 1904 he was moved to the church of the Protection in the village of Zabolotye, where he served until 1936. For his long service he was raised to archpriest. In 1936 the authorities closed the church, and he did all in his power to defend it: he helped believers write petitions for its reopening, but without success.

In the summer of 1937 a new wave of persecution began, and Father Simeon no longer served anywhere; he lived in the village of Kopalovo, Konstantinovo district, with failing health and fast-⁠losing sight. His arrest having been decided in September 1937, the district NKVD arrested him on 11 September and imprisoned him at Zagorsk. A witness, the thirty-⁠two-⁠year-⁠old secretary of the district executive committee, declared on 15 September that the priest Lileev had resisted the closing of the church at Zabolotye in 1936, had not given the keys to the commission, and had organized without permission a meeting of believers of thirteen villages, to which more than a hundred people came and demanded of the chairman of the village council that the keys be returned and the church opened. The next day he was questioned; he admitted only having helped the believers of Zabolotye write various petitions to higher bodies for the opening of the church, and to the rest of the accusations he answered that he did not admit guilt. From Zagorsk he was moved to an NKVD prison in Moscow. On 10 October 1937 an NKVD troika sentenced him to death, and on 13 October he was shot at the Butovo range and buried in an unknown common grave.

He is commemorated on 13 October and, in the new style, on 29 May (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo, on 5 September (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow and on 10 December in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Radonezh.