the holy new martyrs of eastern russia - Coptic Orthodox teaching

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rank of archimandrite. (According to another source, he was ordained to the
priesthood and became an archimandrite in about 1919.) From October 8, 1913
he was supervisor of the Bezhetsk theological school. On October 8, 1914 he
retired from service in the theological schools and was appointed
protopresbyter in the Army and Navy clergy. From October 28, 1915 he was
supervisor of the Kargopol theological school. From 1918 to 1920 he was an
archimandrite of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. In 1919 he was arrested in
Petrograd, but soon released.
On September 26 / October 9, 1921 he was consecrated Bishop of Izhevsk,
a vicariate of the Sarapul diocese. He is also mentioned by one source as
having been temporary administrator of the Kirov diocese. On November 9,
1922 he was arrested in Izhevsk and cast into Butyrki prison in Moscow. On
December 27 he was sentenced to two (or three) years’ exile in Narymsk
region for “counter-revolutionary activity”. At the beginning of 1924
(according to another source, on March 21, 1923) he was again arrested and
put in the Taganka prison in Moscow. From there he appealed to E.A.
Peshkova of the Political Red Cross to give him a sheepskin coat since “the
frosts in Narymsk are savage”. On March 26 he wrote again to Peshkova
thanking her and congratulating her on the feast of Holy Pascha. He was
sentenced to two years in the camps and sent to Solovki.
In August, 1926 he was released, but encountered problems in Izhevsk,
where Bishop Alexis (Kuznetsov) of Sarapul objected to Metropolitan Sergius’
decision to re-open the Izhevsk diocese and succeeded in making
Metropolitan Sergius reverse his decision. Although a part of the clergy and
laity in Izhevsk did not want to submit to Bishop Alexis, suspecting him
because of his temporary fall into renovationism, Bishop Stefan found it
difficult to serve in the circumstances and in the autumn of 1926 went into
retirement in Petrograd. There he served in the church of St. Alexis the Man of
God and, from September 21, 1927, in the church of the Transfiguration.
Elder Sampson (von Sievers) recounted the following incident when he
was serving with Bishop Stephen sometime before 1925: "Vladyka Stephen
was celebrating the Liturgy in the Krestovoy church in the Alexander Nevsky
Lavra. I was a hierodeacon. I brought out the Chalice. Vladyka read: 'I believe,
O Lord, and I confess', lifted the veil and went pale - it was Human Flesh in
Blood! Then he turned to me: 'Look, Father!' What was he to do? He turned
and went through the left door while I went with the Chalice through the
right door into the altar, and began to pray that the Lord would be merciful:
how were we to distribute Human Flesh? Who would take it?... He prayed for
about fifteen minutes with arms raised. Then he looked - and again it had
taken the form of bread. Then he went out and communicated the people.
This incident was known by Metropolitan Gurias, the priest-martyr Lev, who
perished in the mines in Karaganda, and, it seems, by monk-martyr
Barsanuphius, my favourite..."
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