Sophia of Kyiv

Schema-⁠abbess Sophia Grinyova (in the world Sofia Evgenievna, 1873-1941), abbess of the Protection Convent in Kyiv, was a venerable confessor. She was glorified locally in the Kyiv diocese by decision of the Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of 25 August 2012; she is commemorated on 22 March (4 April by the new calendar), the day of her repose. In 1981 she had been numbered among the New Martyrs and Confessors by the Russian Church Outside Russia.

Childhood and calling

She was born in 1873 in Moscow, into a noble family of Tula, the daughter of Evgeny Ivanovich Grinyov, who died when she was seven, and Lidia Dmitrievna. The orphaned children were lodged at the Transfiguration Convent in Belev, where the abbess was their former governess. Later the family moved to the Taruza district, Kaluga province, near Optina; Sofia often went to the monastery. In 1885 a schemamonk called her, before her family, "abbess," and foretold that she would be a worthy one. She studied at the Alexander-⁠Maria Institute in Moscow and then at the Fundukleev gymnasium in Kyiv, and until 1895 at the Kyiv conservatory, in singing. Before graduating she suffered a severe diphtheric throat infection and lost her voice for nine months; healed after a confession at a convent, she resolved on the monastic life.

Monastic life and abbacy

In 1895 she entered the Holy Trinity convent in the Taruza district, probably tonsured a rassophore, where she stayed until 1912. With Ekaterina Metzendorf she then chose Dugninsky Zavod, where there was an abandoned church of Saint John the Merciful and an icon of the Mother of God "Joy and Consolation," patroness of the community that formed. In 1913, on a visit to the Synod in Saint Petersburg, Metropolitan Flavian of Kyiv proposed that she be abbess of the Protection Convent in Kyiv, one of the largest of the empire, tied to the tsar's family; she accepted and in the same year was tonsured a nun and named abbess. She remained in Kyiv until 1923, winning the hearts of the nuns by kindness and humility; she also wrote poetry and prose in the spiritual journals, signing "I. S." In the First World War the convent became a hospital of 225 beds for the wounded. In January 1918, during the red terror, many servants of the Church were killed in Kyiv, among them Metropolitan Vladimir.

Persecution

In 1923 the convent was given to the Renovationists, and she was removed from the leadership. She bought a house at Irpin, near Kyiv, where she made a church and where the nuns moved, the services being served by Archpriest Dimitry Ivanov. She was arrested in 1924, for six weeks, and again in 1928, for seven weeks, when she joined, with twenty nuns and two priests, the Josephite movement and lived on papers under another name. Exile to Kazakhstan was not carried out because of illness. A third time she was arrested in October 1931, in the case of the True Orthodox (Catacomb) Church of Ukraine. On 3 October 1932 she was released, but was forbidden for three years to live in twelve localities. She lived at Putivl, from where she asked in vain to return to Irpin.

Last years and veneration

In 1933 she went into exile in the village of Pokrov, in the Moscow region. In 1934 she received the great schema. In 1937 her secret community was discovered, and the nuns were arrested and taken to the far North, but she was not there. She spent her last days beside the Protection church at Pokrov, suffering from bronchial asthma and a heart condition. She fell asleep in the Lord on 4 April 1941, in the sixty-⁠eighth year of her life.

Her name became known through the book of the writer Elena Kontsevich, printed in the USA in 1976. In 1981 she was numbered among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia glorified by the Russian Church Outside Russia. She was rehabilitated by the Soviet authorities in August 1989. On 11 May 2012 her relics were found, and on 25 August 2012 the Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church numbered her among the locally venerated holy confessors of the Kyiv diocese.