Zosimas of Orenburg

Venerable Zosimas of Orenburg (Zachary Prokofievich Kartsev, in the world) was abbot of the Saint Nicholas skete in Orenburg. He was born in 1860 in the stanitsa of Nizhneozernaya in Orenburg province and reposed in 1920 at the Saint Nicholas Monastery in Orenburg. According to some reports he was still alive in 1923, but his short life no longer mentions this. He was long honoured as a local saint in the metropolis of Orenburg.

Before monastic life

He was an Orenburg Cossack, finished the school of the Cossack administration and married Pelagia Matveevna. They had seven children, but only the daughters Matrona and Evdokia survived. In 1896, desiring the monastic life, with his wife's consent, he settled on a height on the bank of the river Samara, near the village of Pokrovka. After seven years he set out on pilgrimage to the holy places: Voronezh, Kiev and the Diveyevo convent. In a letter of 1906 to a monk of the Holy Trinity monastery in Kiev, he described wonderful appearances of Saint Jonah of Kiev and Saint John of Kronstadt.

Monastic life

In 1906 Zachary Prokofievich began his work to found a monastery. By 1910 a house church in the name of Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker had been built and consecrated, and a bell tower raised. In 1909, by a decree of the Holy Synod, the monastic community was established as the Saint Nicholas skete, under the Dormition-⁠Saint Macarius monastery of Orenburg. In the autumn of 1910, with the consent of his wife, who also later became a nun, Zachary received monastic tonsure with the name Zosimas and was confirmed as head of the skete. He was then ordained hierodeacon, and in the summer of 1911 hieromonk. In 1911 a building for the brethren was built, with a church of the Kazan icon of the Mother of God.

The monastery flourished and received many residents. In July 1917, by decision of the Holy Synod, Hieromonk Zosimas was raised to the rank of abbot. From the beginning of the civil war, seeing grief and death, Abbot Zosimas, according to the testimony of the monks, called everyone to peace, in sermons and in private conversations. He urged the brethren and parishioners to pray for their kin who were fighting.

In August 1919 he was arrested on a charge of counter-⁠revolution and imprisoned in the Orenburg provincial prison, but was later acquitted. The last days of his life were spent in care for the monastery, in prayer and in patience in illness. According to surviving testimonies, he reposed in 1920, at the age of sixty, and was buried beside the altar of the monastery's Saint Nicholas church.

Veneration

In 2014 the grave of Venerable Zosimas was found, after which his veneration, which had been preserved among the people, grew stronger. The Holy Synod of the Russian Church, at its session of 27 December 2024, decided to glorify Venerable Zosimas and set his commemoration on 24 September, the day of his patron, the Holy Martyr Zosimas of Kalutino. The note "13 October by the old calendar" in our record does not agree with 24 September. On 27 February 2025 Metropolitan Peter (Mansurov) of Orenburg celebrated the Divine Liturgy, at which the service of glorification of Venerable Zosimas was performed.