Stephen of Omsk

Righteous Stephen of Omsk (Stephen Yakovlevich Znamensky, 1806 or 1804 to 1876 or 1877) was an archpriest and rector of the Resurrection cathedral in Omsk, a man venerated as a saint already in life, spiritual father of the exiled Decembrists. He was glorified in 1984 among the saints venerated in Siberia, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Siberia, as a righteous man, so as a local saint. He is commemorated (Old Style) on 30 June, locally, and on 10 June, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Siberia.

Life

He was born on 2 August 1806 (according to other data in 1804) at the Zheleznotomsk works in the Tomsk province, today in the Kemerovo region. A priest of a line of priests, he graduated from the seminary at Tobolsk in 1824 and served at the cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul in Barnaul. In 1827, at his request, he was moved to Kurgan, and in 1836 he was appointed priest of the cathedral of the consistory of Tobolsk. In 1839 he was raised to archpriest and served until 1853 at Yalutorovsk. In 1842 he opened, together with the Decembrist I. D. Yakushkin, from gifts of the merchant Medvedev and others, a Lancasterian school for boys, where catechism, sacred history, reading in the Slavic languages, Russian and Latin grammar, geography, arithmetic and penmanship were taught. In 1845, in memory of his wife, he opened a Lancasterian school for girls.

From 1853 he served at Omsk. In fifty years of priesthood, besides the duties of a parish pastor, he bore church obediences as member of the consistory, steward of the seminary, dean, missionary among schismatics, teacher of religion at the district school and the gymnasium and examiner at all the schools of Omsk. His move from Yalutorovsk to Omsk was requested by the governor-⁠general of West Siberia, G. Kh. Gasford, to strengthen the standing of Omsk as the seat of the region of the Siberian Kirghiz. For twenty-⁠three years (1854 to 1876) he was rector of the Resurrection cathedral in the Omsk fortress (the church was demolished at the end of the 1950s). Through his care one of the best spiritual libraries in Siberia was gathered at the church, with 316 titles in 1856 and 1,875 books in the 1900s, for which he took seventeen theological journals. He was close to the archpriest and scholar A. I. Sulotsky, was director of the committee of the Omsk Guardianship of Prisons, sat on many committees for schools and health, and busied himself with improving the lot of the Cossack priests.

He was spiritual father of the Decembrists exiled at Kurgan, Tobolsk and Yalutorovsk, and F. M. Dostoevsky, in exile at Omsk, attended his services. At that time service in Siberia was regarded as a punishment for all ranks, and people unwanted in central Russia were sent there, so the example of the righteous life of Archpriest Stephen was all the brighter. As a man devoted to his service and a strict ascetic of piety, he was venerated by the people as a saint both in life and after death.

Repose and veneration

He died on 2 April 1877 (or 1876) at Omsk and was buried in the Shepelevsky cemetery of the town, destroyed in the 1930s; today a fire tower and 5th Army street stand there. He was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1984. On the icon of the Synaxis of the Saints of Siberia he is painted in the third row on the right. His son, Mikhail Stepanovich Znamensky (1833 to 1892), was a writer, memoirist, painter, caricaturist, archaeologist, ethnographer and local historian.