Kyrill (Smirnov)

In the world, he was known as Konstantin Ilarionovich Smirnov, born to the family of a psalmist on April 26, 1863, in the city of Kronstadt, Saint Petersburg province.

In 1887, he graduated from the Saint Petersburg Theological Academy with a degree of Candidate of Theology.

On November 21, 1887, he was ordained as a priest and assigned to the Resurrection Church of the Temperance Society in Saint Petersburg, simultaneously fulfilling the duties of a law teacher at the Elisavetpol Gymnasium and the 2nd Gymnasium of Saint Petersburg.

From 1900, Father Konstantin was appointed as the rector of the Holy Trinity Cemetery Church in Kronstadt. He served in the priestly rank for 15 years. The death of his wife and daughter prompted the 38-year-old Father Konstantin to take monastic vows in 1902. Soon, he was appointed to the position of head of the Urmia Spiritual Mission in Persia, with elevation to the rank of archimandrite.

On August 6, 1904, the ordination of Archimandrite Kirill as the Bishop of Gdovsk, vicar of the Saint Petersburg diocese, took place. Wishing for the people to participate more fully in worship, the Bishop introduced congregational singing during services in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.

Saint Righteous John of Kronstadt, before his death, asked that the young Bishop Kirill, whom he knew from his service in Kronstadt, conduct his funeral service. Later, Bishop Kirill also conducted the funeral service for the wife of Saint Righteous John, Elizaveta Konstantinovna.

From 1908 to 1918, the Bishop managed the Tambov and Shatsk dioceses. He endeavored to make frequent trips to the most remote places of his diocese to communicate with his flock. In 1913, he was elevated to the rank of archbishop. In 1914, through the efforts of the Bishop, the canonization of Saint Pitirim of Tambov took place.

During World War I, on the initiative of the Saint, funds were collected for the needs of the front, hospitals were established in monasteries, shelters for children who had lost their parents, and various committees to assist the soldiers.

At the Local Council of 1917-1918, the Bishop was nominated second among the initially selected 25 candidates for the patriarchate. He was also elected a member of the Holy Synod under Patriarch Tikhon.

On March 19, 1918, the saint was appointed to the metropolitan see of Tiflis and Baku and to the position of Exarch of the Caucasus with the right to wear a white klobuk and a miter with crosses. Due to the wartime conditions, he was able to reach only Baku. He used the month spent there to arrange church affairs and organize a system of church governance, preserving and organizing the parishes and congregations that remained under the jurisdiction of the Russian Church and did not join the schism with the majority of Georgians. Unable to reach Georgia, he returned to Moscow for the third session of the Local Council, where he presented a report on "The Organization of the Orthodox Church in the Transcaucasus." Opinions within the Council were divided on this issue, and it was decided to refer the matter to the Higher Church Administration.

On the night of December 24-25, 1919, Bishop Kirill was arrested in Moscow on charges of "counter-revolutionary agitation through the distribution of appeals and communication with Kolchak and Denikin" and imprisoned by the Cheka.

In 1920, after his release, he was appointed to the Kazan and Sviyazhsk see, but a month later he was again arrested in Kazan on charges of "leaving Moscow for Kazan without permission from the Cheka." He was sentenced to five years in a labor camp. In the Taganka prison in Moscow, he shared a cell with the holy martyrs Archbishop Feodor (Pozdeevsky) and Bishop Guriy (Stepanov).

In 1921, he was released under an amnesty and returned to Kazan, where he resided in the John the Baptist Monastery.

In 1922, he was again arrested, and after being held in a Moscow prison, he was exiled to Ust-Sysolsk (now Syktyvkar).

Later, the Bishop was exiled to Ust-Kulom (Komi Autonomous Oblast), where he stayed with Bishop Athanasius (Sakharov), and subsequently transferred to the town of Kotel'nich in the Vyatka region. There are reports that from Ust-Kulom, the head of the GPU department, E.A. Tuchkov, summoned Metropolitan Kirill to Moscow for negotiations, proposing to "come to an agreement," essentially asking him to compromise. However, this attempt was unsuccessful for the authorities.

In 1924, the saint returned from exile and met in Moscow with Patriarch Tikhon, successfully persuading him to refuse reconciliation and cooperation with the renovationist V. Krasnitsky. The GPU was imposing these actions on the Patriarch, promising to release the archpastors from prisons in return. To these promises, the Bishop said to the Patriarch, "Your Holiness, do not think about us, the bishops. We are now only fit for prisons..." Upon hearing this, the Patriarch crossed out Krasnitsky's name from the signed document.

From Moscow, the Bishop moved near Yel'sk, then to Perevolok. By the testamentary order of Patriarch Tikhon dated December 25, 1924, he was appointed the first candidate for the position of Patriarchal locum tenens. Soon after, the saint was again sent into exile. Because of this, after the death of Patriarch Tikhon, he could not assume the position of locum tenens, which was taken by the holy martyr Metropolitan Peter (Polyansky).

In 1926, the idea of secretly electing a patriarch arose among the episcopate. Under the act of electing Metropolitan Kirill, whose term of exile was about to end, 72 bishop signatures were collected (while Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky) had only one). Thus, Metropolitan Kirill was elected patriarch, but his enthronement did not take place because the GPU learned of this action.

When Tuchkov learned the results of the voting, he declared that he would allow the enthronement of Metropolitan Kirill to the patriarchal throne only on the condition that in the future, when appointing bishops, he would follow his instructions. The bishop replied, "Evgeny Alekseevich, you are not a cannon, and I am not a shell with which you hope to destroy the Russian Church."

Soon, a wave of arrests followed. Metropolitan Kirill, who was in exile, was arrested and imprisoned in the city of Vyatka. He was additionally sentenced to three years of exile and, from April 1927, was sent to the village of Khantaika in the Turukhansk district of the Krasnoyarsk region, and then to the city of Yeniseysk.

After the issuance of the Declaration of Metropolitan Sergius in 1927, the bishop severed communion with him, as he did not want to participate in what his "conscience... recognized as sinful." A staunch supporter of the patriarchate, he considered the Synod established by Metropolitan Sergius a threat to the sole patriarchal authority.

Metropolitan Kirill was deeply outraged by the Synod's August decree prohibiting priests from conducting funeral services for those who died in schism. He did not list this decree among the reasons for his separation but pointed to it as a reason to consider Metropolitan Sergius "having lost his mental balance."

In the administrative church activities of Metropolitan Sergius, the bishop saw an overreach of the powers granted to him by the title of deputy locum tenens, which led to a schism in the Church. The bishop considered the preservation of central church authority at such a price to be meaningless and harmful. In conditions where the legal arrangement of central administrative church authority was impossible, and when it became clear that "Metropolitan Sergius rules the Church without the guidance of Metropolitan Peter," he called for adherence to St. Patriarch Tikhon's decree of November 20, 1920, according to which bishops were to establish local self-governance and later, under more favorable conditions, report their activities to the Council.

From May to November 1929, the bishop corresponded with Metropolitan Sergius, trying to convince him to abandon the path of compromises.

Metropolitan Sergius responded with threats of canonical punishment, demanding the preservation of church discipline. The bishop, defending those who expressed their disagreement with the church course of the Deputy Locum Tenens, unwilling to "participate in what their conscience recognized as sinful," replied to this demand: "This confession is attributed to them as a violation of church discipline, but discipline can maintain its effectiveness only as long as it is an effective reflection of the hierarchical conscience of the conciliar Church; discipline can in no way replace this conscience. As soon as it makes its demands not by virtue of the indications of this conscience, but by motives alien to the Church or insincere, the individual hierarchical conscience will inevitably stand guard over the conciliar-hierarchical principle of the Church's existence, which is not the same as the external 'unity at any cost.'"

In December 1929, Metropolitan Sergius subjected the bishop to the trial of the archbishops and dismissed him from the management of the Kazan diocese.

Since 1932, the Bishop was in exile in the Turukhansk region. For half a year, there is only night here, interrupted only by the Northern Lights, and for half a year, the inhabitants of this region are cut off from the rest of the world: no letters, newspapers, or parcels. Frost reaches up to 60 degrees. The short polar summer brings swarms of tormenting gnats and mosquitoes, scurvy, and a lack of basic necessities... Such were the conditions in the exiles beyond the Arctic Circle. Many exiled bishops lived in small villages far from each other, so they could not meet. Only with the Hieromartyr Bishop Damaskin (Cedric) did the bishop manage to have a short meeting, and from then on, they became lifelong friends.

After his release in August 1933, the saint lived for a short time in the city of Gzhatsk. The like-minded clergy persistently asked the saint to assert his rights and take upon himself the burden of managing the suffering Church. But the Bishop considered it impossible to do this until he fully understood the situation. In 1934, the saint came to Moscow and went to the Patriarchate. The stationed guard blocked his entry, but the tall, once mighty bishop, pushing him aside, stepped into Metropolitan Sergius's office. A few moments later, the Bishop emerged. This was their last meeting.

Soon, in the summer of 1934, he was arrested in Gzhatsk on charges of "counter-revolutionary activities" and placed in the special internal isolation unit of the Butyrka prison in Moscow. The saint was sentenced to 3 years of exile, which he served in the village of Yany-Kurgan (South Kazakhstan region). Nearby, in the same exile, lived Metropolitan Joseph (Petrovykh), and the two elder metropolitans were comforted by at least some possibility of communication. "With Metropolitan Joseph," the bishop wrote, "I am in fraternal communication, gratefully appreciating that it was with his blessing that the first protest against Metropolitan Sergius's plan was expressed from the Petrograd diocese, and a warning of impending danger was given to all."

The bishop, according to Bishop Afanasy (Sakharov), allowed as a form of protest the non-attendance of "Sergian" churches, but he condemned the blasphemies of irrational zealots against the services held there. For himself, he permitted confession to a "Sergian" priest only in cases of mortal necessity. In one of his letters in 1929, the saint wrote: "The substitution of authority made by him (Metropolitan Sergius) cannot, of course, be called a falling away from the Church, but it is undoubtedly a most grievous sin of apostasy. I will not call the perpetrators of the sin graceless, but I will not participate in communion with them and do not bless others to do so, as I have no other means to rebuke the sinning brother." He wrote directly to Metropolitan Sergius: "I relate my complete abstinence only to you, but not to the ordinary clergy and even less to the laity. Among the ordinary clergy, very few are conscious ideologists of your church activities."

In 1934, the bishop wrote in a letter to an unknown archpastor, according to the biography of Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow and All Russia:

On July 7, 1937, the bishop was arrested in exile and imprisoned in the city of Chimkent. During the interrogation, where he was accused of "heading all counter-revolutionary clergy," the bishop held himself very courageously and took full responsibility for the accusation upon himself.

On November 6, he was sentenced to execution by a troika of the NKVD.

On November 20, he was executed in the Lisiy Nos ravine near Chimkent along with Metropolitan Joseph (Petrovykh) and Bishop Eugene (Kobranov).

Canonized as a saint among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia at the Jubilee Bishops' Council of the Russian Orthodox Church in August 2000 for veneration by the entire Church.

Service to Hieromartyr Kirill of Kazan.