In the world, Pyotr Matveyevich Ionov was born on January 15, 1883, in the village of Troitskoye, Kamensky District, Penza Province, into a pious peasant family. He loved prayer and solitude from a young age. After completing his course at the rural school, Pyotr retreated to the Holy Trinity Skanov Monastery and was enrolled as a novice on November 16, 1907.
From July 10, 1912, with the blessing of the monastery’s abbot, he went on a pilgrimage to the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra for two months.
In 1913, he took monastic vows with the name Pakhomiy.
On July 6 of the same year, he was ordained a hierodeacon and appointed to the obedience of a scribe. As noted by everyone in the monastery, he was "of excellent qualities, very capable, honest, diligent, and meek." Soon (no later than 1917) he was ordained a priest.
After the official closure of the monastery in 1928, Hieromonk Pakhomiy lived in the village of Troitskoye, where he kept a beekeeping farm. When the beekeeping farm was confiscated two years later, he undertook the spiritual guidance of Orthodox Christians under persecution. Risking his life, he traveled through villages performing priestly duties.
In the village of Pichury, near the Holy Trinity Skanov Monastery, there was a monastery farmstead. Here, a small community gathered around Hieromonk Pakhomiy. Services were held in a cell adapted as a church, belonging to the church warden Fevroniya Ivanovna Tsibirkina. The community was joined by Priest Efrem Kurdyukov and the former abbot of the Skanov Monastery, Archimandrite Filaret (Ignashkin), who had returned from a concentration camp.
On June 27, 1935, Father Pakhomiy was arrested. Until September 21, he was held in the Penza prison, part of the group case "The Case of Hieromonk Pakhomiy (Ionov) and others, Mordovian ASSR, 1935."
Hieromonk Pakhomiy was accused of being "hostile to the existing regime, illegally residing in the village of Pichury, creating a counter-revolutionary group from the church and monastic activists, conducting illegal gatherings, distributing counter-revolutionary literature - 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion' - and conducting anti-Soviet and anti-collective farm propaganda aimed at weakening the existing regime and collective farm construction."
On September 21, 1935, by a special meeting of the NKVD of the USSR, under articles 58-10, 58-11 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, Father Pakhomiy was sentenced to five years in a concentration camp. He was sent to the Bidaik branch of the KarLag of the NKVD.
On September 20, 1937, he was arrested in the camp, part of the group case "The Case of Metropolitan Yevgeny (Zernov) and others, Karaganda, 1937."
From the indictment:
"Gathering in the dormitories, the boiler house, the fuel guardhouse, and the garden, the prisoners Zernov, Ionov, Vyzhva, Ashchepyev, and Kreydich, under the leadership of Zernov, conducted counter-revolutionary religious propaganda of a monarchical nature, served memorial services for the execution of the people's enemies Tukhachevsky, Uborevich, and others, and spread provocative rumors about the war and the collapse of Soviet power."
By the decision of the troika of the NKVD of the Karaganda region, under articles 58-10, 58-11 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, Hieromonk Pakhomiy was sentenced to execution. He was executed on September 20, 1937.
On April 28, 1989, he was rehabilitated by the Prosecutor's Office of the Penza region for the 1935 repressions.
In 2000, at the Bishops' Council of the Russian Orthodox Church, Hieromonk Pakhomiy (Ionov) was glorified as a saint among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia.
On March 29, 2003, he was rehabilitated by the Prosecutor of the city of Karaganda for the 1937 repressions.
Saints of Kazakhstan
