Xenophon Bondarenko

Holy Venerable Martyr Xenophon Bondarenko, a hieromonk, in the world Constantine Andreevich Bondarenko, was born on 13 May 1886 in the village of Nikitovka, Valuyki district, Voronezh province, in a peasant family. After the folk school in Kopano-⁠Nikitovka he helped his father on the farm. On 21 January 1910 he entered the Lavra of the Holy Trinity and Saint Sergius; on 28 May 1916 he was received as a novice, and on 15 June of the same year he was tonsured a monk with the name Xenophon and became cell attendant of the Lavra's deputy superior, Archimandrite Cronides (Lyubimov). In 1918 he was ordained hierodeacon, and in 1926 hieromonk.

After the closing of the Lavra, in 1919, Father Xenophon remained in it as a locksmith at the Commission for the Protection of Monuments of Art and Antiquity. In 1924 he moved to Petrograd and worked as a mechanic at various factories, but then returned to Moscow and was sent by the church authorities to churches that needed a priest. In 1932 he served at the church of the village of Mikhailovskoe, Zvenigorod district. Wishing to stay there permanently, he handed in his passport to the village soviet, but the chairman, seeing that the priest was entered in the passport as a worker, since he had received it while working at a factory, sent the passport to the OGPU. Out of fear of persecution he had to return to Moscow and was sent to the church in the village of Kolkovo near Moscow, where he served almost a year, until it became clear that the OGPU intended to arrest him there too. To avoid arrest the church authorities sent him to the village of Alexeevskoe, Solnechnogorsk district.

In January 1935 an OGPU officer questioned the deacon who served with Father Xenophon, and he spoke against the priest. Some local people were also questioned and gave the statements that pleased the investigators. Father Xenophon was arrested on 12 March 1935 and put in Butyrka. Asked whether he had talked to the peasants about politics and had advised them not to join the collective farm, he answered that he had not talked about politics and that, on the contrary, he had advised some to join the collective farm: "I consider that the collective farm does not stand in the way of the Church". At a confrontation with a witness, the latter maintained that Bondarenko had urged him not to join the collective farm and to suffer like the holy fathers, and he denied it. He did not admit guilt of anti-⁠Soviet agitation. On 21 March 1935 the investigation ended, charging him with having "systematically carried on anti-⁠Soviet agitation among the peasants of Alexeevskoe" and spread provocative rumours about the downfall of Soviet power, which brought the collective farm to the edge of collapse. On 31 March 1935 the Special Council of the NKVD sentenced him to three years in a camp and he was sent to Temlag at Potma, where he served his whole term.

In August 1937 he returned from the Temnikov camp and settled in the town of Alexandrov, Vladimir region, since as a man released from camp he was not allowed to live closer to Moscow. The NKVD was already gathering information on all who in its view were to be arrested, first of all the clergy, and Father Xenophon's visit to Zagorsk to the former deputy superior of the Lavra, Archimandrite Cronides (Lyubimov), did not go unnoticed. On 19 September he visited him as an old friend and man of the same mind, to tell him of his arrest and camp life. The account impressed the old man so much that he began to comfort him and urge him to patience, since everywhere shepherds were persecuted by the godless authorities. Father Xenophon asked whether he should take a post as priest in some church, but the archimandrite advised him not to go to a church but to take a job in some civilian enterprise, since only so could he hide his conviction for counter-⁠revolutionary activity and avoid being at once arrested again.

After that Father Xenophon visited Archimandrite Cronides several more times, including on 20 November 1937, when Father Cronides and his cell attendant were arrested. Finding Father Xenophon there, the NKVD officers first asked him to sign the search warrant as a witness, then, taking the archimandrite and the cell attendant, arrested the hieromonk Xenophon as well. All the arrested monks were put in the Taganka prison in Moscow. The investigator told him he was an active participant in a counter-⁠revolutionary monarchist monastic group, and he denied it. He admitted that he had been a novice to Father Cronides and carried out his commands, that after his arrest of 1935 he had written him a letter from Temlag, and that after his release in August 1937 he had gone three times to the archimandrite's home in Zagorsk, where he was not permitted to live, to visit him as an old acquaintance, he being aged. He denied having spoken in the archimandrite's home against the elections to the Supreme Soviet. So the interrogations ended.

On 7 December 1937 the NKVD troika sentenced him to death. The hieromonk Xenophon (Bondarenko) was shot on 10 December 1937 and buried in an unknown mass grave at the Butovo firing range near Moscow. He is commemorated on 10 December, the day of his death (the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Radonezh), on 29 May, with the Synaxis of the New Martyrs who suffered at Butovo (the date moves), on 19 July, with the Synaxis of the Saints of Radonezh, and on 5 September, with the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow, in the new style.