the holy new martyrs of eastern russia - Coptic Orthodox teaching

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the great and heavy obedience he had undertaken. The Patriarch received him
kindly, and while they were talking the newly-appointed Metropolitans
Agathangelus and Cyril arrived. From that time Fr. Pitirim always continued
to correspond with these great leaders and future hieromartyrs of the Russian
Church.
At the end of December, 1917, Fr. Pitirim was summoned by the Holy
Synod to Petersburg in connection with the Bessarabian monasteries, and in
June, 1918 the Patriarch summoned him to Moscow and entrusted him with a
gramota to the Patriarch in Constantinople, from whom he had received no
communications since November of the previous year.
Fr. Pitirim had to go to Lenin himself in order to obtain permission for
himself and several wounded people to leave Moscow. With great difficulty
he reached Kiev in August, where he visited the grave of the New
Hieromartyr Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev before celebrating the feast of the
Dormition with the new metropolitan, Anthony (Khrapovitsky). It was not
until October, as the war was ending, that he reached Constantinople on a
steamboat together with a large embassy from the Hetman of the Ukraine.
Having arrived at the residence of the Patriarch, Fr. Pitirim was told that
the Ecumenical Patriarch had received Patriarch Tikhon's gramota already in
November, 1917, and welcomed the restoration of the patriarchate in Russia.
He then petitioned for, and obtained, the transfer to himself of the seven
Russian metochia (podvorya) in Constantinople, and proceeded to transfer
3700 Russian prisoners of war into them in preparation for their repatriation
to Russia.
He continues the story in his biography: "On November 1st, 1918, the
English, French, Italian and Greek fleets arrived in Constantinople and
occupied it, making it neutral from that day on. It was ruled by four powers:
England, France, Italy and Turkey. On November 3rd, our prisoners were
clothed by the English, who gave each man three pairs of underwear, shoes,
soldiers' blouses, greatcoats, service caps, waterproof raincoats and provisions
in the form of tinned food. The prisoners began to sell everything in the
market and get drunk. Then the command went out from all the powers that
no one was to buy English military clothes from prisoners of war. Typhus
appeared among the prisoners and they began to die. I myself had to clothe
the dead and go to the cemetery to sing the burial service. The whole of
November passed in this way. I was tormented together with them. They
began to pull up the floors, cut them up and burn them, and then boil
themselves tea. There was any amount [of wood] in the courtyard, but they
didn't take that, but burned the floors in the house. Then I began to ask the
powers to allow me to bring twenty-four people from Athos, three for each
podvorye. They gave me leave to go to Athos.
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