Simeon Ivanovich Afonkin

He was born on February 13, 1870, in the village of Obrochno (now the village of Obrochnoe in the Ichalkovsky district of Mordovia) in the Krasnoslobodsky district of Penza province.

He became a priest in Kaskelen, Kazakhstan, and honorably carried out his pastoral ministry during the difficult post-revolutionary years. Being in canonical communion with Archbishop Tikhon (Sharapov) of Almaty, but practically in an illegal position, he was forced to serve not in a church but in a prayer house.

On November 24, 1937, he was arrested. Father Simeon was accused of: "spreading anti-Soviet propaganda among the population of Kaskelen, while instilling religious beliefs. Regarding the new Constitution, he said that it was issued not for all people but for a certain category of people, while making slanderous remarks against the Soviet government, stating that Christians were enslaved, driven into collective farms where they are mocked."

He did not plead guilty to the charges. He was sentenced to the highest measure of punishment by the troika of the NKVD of the Alma-Ata region.

On December 8, 1937, Priest Simeon Afonkin was executed.

He was canonized as a saint in the Synaxis of New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia by the decision of the Jubilee Bishops' Council of the Russian Orthodox Church in August 2000 for general church veneration.

For a long time, the burial place of the saint remained unknown. His relics were discovered at the end of 2013, 40 km from Almaty, at the former NKVD polygon "Zhanalyk," near the church in honor of St. Righteous John of Kronstadt in the village of Zhetygen, next to the holy remains of Hieromartyrs Bishop Porfiry (Gulevich) and Priest Sergey Brednikov.