Sergius (Zverev)

In the world, he was Alexander Mikhailovich Zverev, born on February 4, 1870, in the village of Petropavlovskoye, Berdyansk Uyezd, Yekaterinodar Province (now Zaporizhzhia Oblast), into a priest's family.

He graduated from Simferopol Theological School, Taurida Theological Seminary, the Faculty of Law at St. Petersburg University, and the Court Singing Chapel with the title of choirmaster and teacher of church singing of the first rank.

From 1893 to 1897, he studied at the Moscow Theological Academy, graduating with a degree of Candidate of Theology.

On August 8, 1899, he was ordained as a priest and served as inspector and catechist of the diocesan women's school of the Taurida Diocese until August 7, 1912. From August 23, 1899, he was also the chairman of the Taurida Diocesan School Council, and from September of the same year, he was involved in the guardianship of the poor of clerical rank.

On September 19, 1912, he was elevated to the rank of protopriest and served in the Ministry of National Education until 1920. He was also a member of the Taurida Scholarly Archival Commission from 1915.

From November 1921, he served as the rector of the Sts. Peter and Paul Cathedral in Simferopol. He then took monastic vows with the name Sergius and was elevated to the dignity of archimandrite in 1922.

On August 4, 1922, he was consecrated as the Bishop of Sevastopol, a vicar of the Taurida Diocese. In 1923, he became the Bishop of Melitopol, a vicar of Taurida.

In that year, his first arrest occurred on May 11. He was initially detained in Yekaterinoslav until July 25, 1923, when his proposed exile to Arkhangelsk province was canceled.

After his release, he resumed his duties as the Bishop of Melitopol and vicar of Taurida. He was arrested again on October 8, 1923. The arrest, based on denunciations and ongoing slander, was met with calm and without complaint by the bishop. He was imprisoned in Melitopol, later transferred to a detention center in Kharkov in 1924, and was released that same year "for lack of evidence of a crime."

After his release, he moved to Moscow, where he lived without the right to leave. From 1924 to 1926, he was the acting administrator of the Samara Diocese. During the preparation for the Renovationist pseudo-council of 1925, he refused to engage in any negotiations with the Renovationist commission sent to him. On the contrary, through his numerous trips around the diocese, he managed to reunite many former Renovationist parishes with the Mother Church. On April 12, 1925, he attended the burial of St. Patriarch Tikhon and signed the act transferring supreme church authority to Metropolitan Peter of Krutitsy (Polyansky).

In 1926, he resided in Samara without the right to leave and was then arrested and sentenced under Article 58-10 of the RSFSR Penal Code to 2 or 3 years of exile. He served his sentence in Sverdlovsk prison in 1927, and from 1927 to 1929, he was exiled in the Tobolsk province.

In 1927, he was elevated to the rank of archbishop. In August 1929, his exile ended, and on September 25 of that year, he was appointed to the Yelets diocese. He organized diocesan life based on Gospel love, continuously preached whenever possible, visited parishes, and persistently sought legal ways to preserve the parishes. Some sources indicate that in 1929, he temporarily served as the acting administrator of the Voronezh diocese.

There is evidence that after the issuance of Metropolitan Sergius's Declaration, he was in hidden opposition to him and did not mention his name during services.

On January 21, 1935, he was arrested for "anti-Soviet propaganda." During interrogations, the archbishop did not admit guilt and was sentenced on October 27, 1935, to five years in a labor camp for "participation in a church-monarchist group."

After spending about a year in the Yelets prison, he was exiled in 1936 to the Karaganda labor camp of the NKVD. The archbishop worked at the power station in the 12th division of the camp. Even in the camp, he gathered secretly with other clergy and laity for prayer, conducting secret memorial services. Zealous for the Church, he continued to emphasize that the training of new clergy was a primary task. The investigator later included this in the indictment, labeling these activities as "illegal counter-revolutionary gatherings" and "counter-revolutionary agitation."

On October 7, 1937, the martyr was arrested again, and on November 20, he was sentenced to death on charges of "organizing the True Orthodox Church." He did not admit guilt for the charges brought against him.

He was executed on the day of the sentence, November 20, 1937, in the Karaganda concentration camp.

On November 28, 1957, he was rehabilitated from the repressions of 1937, and on November 16, 1992, from the charges of 1935.

He was glorified as a locally venerated saint and "Archbishop of Melitopol" by the decision of the Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church on June 11, 1997, with the commemoration established on November 1/14, the presumed day of his martyrdom. The glorification took place in Melitopol.

He was canonized among the new martyrs and confessors of Russia at the Jubilee Bishops' Council of the Russian Orthodox Church in August 2000 for universal veneration.