Theophilus Sharonin

The monk Theophilus, in the world Fyodor Sharonin, was a blessed one and fool for Christ at the Sviatogorsk Lavra. He died on 31 January 1868. He is venerated as a local saint in the Orthodox Church in Ukraine, in the diocese of Donetsk, in the Synaxis of the saints of Sviatogorsk.

He came of a family of townspeople of Sevsk in the Oryol governorate. He struggled in the Sviatogorsk monastery, where his obedience was in the monastery's smithy. He did not begin any work without the blessing of the mantle-⁠monk Dorotheus (Zhila), who was in charge of the smithy. He bore the ascetic labor of foolishness for Christ and was secretly tonsured into the mantle with the name Theophilus.

Before his death he suffered long in his legs and lay nearly a year in the monastery's infirmary. After a time he began to recover and to walk. On 30 January 1868, after the rule in the infirmary church, he bowed in an unusual manner and took leave of the brethren, after which he went away to die in the forest. His body was found two kilometers from the infirmary, under a pine.

On 8 May 2008 the Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine decided on his local canonization in the diocese of Donetsk, in the Synaxis of the saints of Sviatogorsk. The service of glorification took place during the visit to the Sviatogorsk Lavra, on 12 July 2008, of the primate of the Church, Metropolitan Vladimir of Kyiv and all Ukraine, in the Dormition cathedral.