Theodore Smirnov

Holy Hieromartyr Theodore (Vladimir Alexeevich Smirnov, in the world) was bishop of Penza and Saransk. He was born on 17 January 1891 in the village of Kozlovka, Saratov province, and was shot on 4 September 1937 at Penza. The Russian Church numbered him among the saints in 2000, at the Jubilee Council of Bishops in August, for veneration throughout the Church, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia. He is commemorated on 22 August by the old calendar.

He was born into the family of a psalm-⁠reader. In 1911 he finished the Saratov seminary and in 1916 the Kazan Theological Academy, with the degree of candidate in theology. From 1916 to 1918 he was a teacher of history and other subjects in secondary schools in the town of Volsk. In 1918 and 1919 he worked in various institutions in Saratov. From 1919 to 1920 he served in the Red Army as an instructor in the school and political department of the Don-⁠North Caucasus division. In 1921 he was an instructor of pre-⁠school education at the regional water transport administration in Saratov. On 4 October 1921 he was ordained priest.

He was sentenced in 1924 to one year and in 1929 to three years of exile at Narym. After release he was priest in the village of Nikolskoe, in the Kuznetsk district, Penza region. In 1934 he was tonsured a monk, and in April 1935 he moved to Penza. From 23 September 1935 he was bishop of Penza and Saransk. He served at the Mitrofanievskaya church in Penza, which was his cathedral. The bishop drew close to him the priest of this church, Father Gabriel Arkhangelsky, as an old acquaintance from the Saratov seminary and a zealous pastor of the Tikhonite orientation.

On 18 October 1936 he was arrested. He was accused of having formed, out of elements persecuted by Soviet power, a counter-⁠revolutionary group with the aim of carrying on agitation to overthrow Soviet power and set up a fascist dictatorship. At the interrogations he held firm and categorically denied guilt. On 5 February 1937 he was retired. On 7 August 1937 he was sentenced as "leader of a counter-⁠revolutionary organization of reactionary clergy, anti-⁠Soviet agitation" and condemned to death. He was shot on 4 September 1937.

Canonized together with him were those shot on the same day: the priest Gabriel Ivanovich Arkhangelsky (1890 to 1937), who served as psalm-⁠reader at the Mitrofanievskaya church in Penza, and the priest Vasily Sergeevich Smirnov (1889 to 1937), who at the time of his arrest worked as a disinfector at the Penza bacteriological institute.