Tryphon Skripchenko

Venerable confessor Tryphon Skripchenko (born Tikhon Vasilievich Skripchenko, 1865 to 1939) was an archimandrite and abbot of the Sviatohirsk Hermitage (Holy Mountains), sentenced in 1922 for hiding church valuables, who died in exile in the village of Svatova Luchka. He was canonized on 8 May 2008 by the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church as a saint venerated only locally, in the diocese of Donetsk, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Sviatohirsk, and the glorification took place on 12 July 2008 in the Dormition cathedral of the Lavra. He is commemorated on 11 September (Old Style).

Life

He was born in 1865 in the village of Prorub, in the Sumy district of the Kharkiv province, into a peasant family. On 17 January 1890 he entered the Sviatohirsk Hermitage as a novice, and on 15 March 1895 was finally received among the novices. On 3 July 1897 he was tonsured a monk with the name Tryphon, on 16 August hierodeacon and on 13 July 1899 hieromonk. In 1900, at the time of the Boxer rebellion, he went as military priest to the Far East with the Russian troops. On 27 March 1903 he was appointed treasurer of the monastery and later received distinctions: the epigonation, the pectoral cross and, in 1907, the Red Cross medal. On 3 May 1909 he was raised to hegumen. By a decree of the Holy Synod of 8 May 1909 he was ordered to take over the monastery of Riasna, but, because of the grave illness of the abbot, Archimandrite Vassian, he remained at Sviatohirsk and bore the leadership of the monastery; in the same year, after Vassian's death, he was elected abbot of the Sviatohirsk Hermitage. On 1 October 1910 he was raised to archimandrite by Archbishop Arsenius, at Kharkiv. In 1910 he began building the church of All Saints on the brotherhood cemetery, consecrated on 7 May 1912 by Bishop Theodore (Lebedev).

Persecution

After the revolution the squeezing of the monastery began. On 8 to 12 June 1922, at the sessions of the revolutionary tribunal of the Donetsk province at Bakhmut, he was sentenced to two years of forced labour for hiding church valuables from the confiscation carried out for the relief of the hungry. After his release he could not return to the Kharkiv region and settled in the village of Svatova Luchka, in the Luhansk region. He reposed on 14 May 1939, at four in the afternoon.

Canonization

On 8 May 2008 the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church decided on the local canonization of the ascetic in the diocese of Donetsk, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Sviatohirsk. The glorification service was held on 12 July 2008 in the Dormition cathedral of the Sviatohirsk Lavra, on the occasion of the visit of the primate of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Volodymyr of Kyiv.