Stefan Konstantinovich Ponomaryov

He was born on December 14, 1880, in the city of Verny, Semirechenskaya oblast, into a bourgeois family.

On May 13, 1895, he graduated from the Holy Trinity Four-Class Church Parish School.

From June 28, 1904, he served as a psalmist and singing teacher at the parish school in the village of Mikhailovskoye, Vernensky Uyezd, Semirechenskaya oblast (now Turgenev, Kazakhstan). On June 25, 1905, he was confirmed in the position of psalmist. On January 24, 1907, he was vested in the sticharion at the Krestovskaya Church of the Episcopal House.

From October 20, 1908, he served as a psalmist in the village of Zaytsevskaya, Vernensky Uyezd (now the city of Chilik, Kazakhstan).

In 1909, he was ordained a deacon at the Church of St. Nicholas on Zubovskaya Square in the city of Verny. By 1914, he was ordained a priest.

During the First World War, he served as a priest with the Red Cross. During combat operations, he spent a long time in the trenches. It was spring, and rain and wet snow filled the trenches with water and mud. The priest was pulled out of the trenches barely alive and taken to a hospital, where he underwent surgery to remove the rotten nasal cartilages from chronic sinusitis, causing his nose bridge to collapse. Before this, Father Stefan had a very handsome appearance and a proud demeanor. Upon returning from the front, he said, "God marks the knave. The Lord has marked and humbled me as well." From that time on, he suffered from severe headaches.

The priests lived very modestly. To ease household management, the single Father Alexander moved to live with Father Stefan and his wife, Praskovya. There was hardly any food. Sometimes, the priests would visit the nuns: "Sisters, give us a glass of water and some bread." The sisters would give them some, and they would salt it, eat it, and that would last them until the evening.

During the Great Lent of 1927, four nuns and an orphan girl named Anastasia Nagibina moved to live in the Nikolaev Church at the invitation of the rector, Father Alexander Skalsky. They settled in the lower semi-basement room. In the church, they sang in the choir, baked prosphora, sold candles, cleaned, and lived almost according to the monastic rule. The spiritual father of this small sisterhood was Protopriest Father Stefan.

Father Stefan was thoughtful and silent, always immersed in prayer. He lived as a strict monk and served daily, never missing a single service. His services were quiet, solemn, and unhurried, always profound and reverent. Father Stefan remained faithful to the Orthodox Church to the end; he did not deviate into renovationism and prevented the rector, Father Alexander, from making a possible mistake.

Although he had a wife, Praskovya Kuzminichna, who loved him unconditionally, they were childless. After Father Stefan's death, Praskovya revealed that they had lived their entire lives as brother and sister. "After we were married, he said to me, 'Dear Praskovya Kuzminichna, do you want to enter paradise and be with the Lord?' 'I do,' I replied. 'Then, I am your brother, and you are my sister.'"

Seeing that it was difficult for Father Alexander Skalsky, whose wife had left him, to live alone, Father Stefan persuaded him to settle in his home. They lived in adjacent rooms. In Father Stefan's room, there was practically nothing except icons. Praskovya Kuzminichna lived in the lower part of the house, alleviating their daily life with her care.

In the 1930s, the Nikolsky Church remained the only stronghold of Orthodoxy in the city.

At that time, a transit point of the GPU was established in Almaty, where prisoners from all over the country were sent. There, prisoners were assigned to camps, and exiles had to go to the GPU for directions to their places of exile. The head of the GPU at that time was a certain comrade Ivanov. His mother was a believer, so he knew the nuns well and treated them fairly. When there were too many exiles and nowhere to accommodate them, the head of the Almaty GPU sent them to the Nikolsky Church, knowing that it welcomed all the destitute. There was not a single night when exiles did not sleep in the Nikolsky Church. The nuns stoked the stove in the church basement, cooked food, and washed the exiles' clothes. Father Alexander provided money from the meager church income to help the exiles, purchasing food, clothing, and shoes for them. Epidemics often came to the city with the exiles. One year, typhus raged, but even then, the church welcomed everyone, and none of the priests or sisters fell ill.

On December 10, 1932, Father Stefan was arrested by GPU officers after the All-night Vigil on the eve of the feast of the Icon of the Mother of God "The Sign" in the Nikolsky Church, along with Father Alexander Skalsky and many clergymen of Almaty.

Initially, Father Stefan was interrogated at the GPU for about a month. He was then sent to a sanitary checkpoint. There, he was heavily steamed in a bathhouse, placed in the back of an open truck, and driven through the cold to the city prison. Severely chilled, he immediately fell ill with typhus and was sent to the typhus barrack of the Red Cross on January 9, 1933.

He died of typhus on January 18, 1933, in the typhus barrack of the Red Cross in Almaty. He was buried behind the Golovny Aryk, in the camp cemetery, next to Father Alexander Skalsky and Father Philip Grigoriev in a common grave.

From the recollections of Anastasia Nagibina:

"Father Philip was taken home by his relatives from the barracks, and from home, we took him and buried him on the hill. There was nowhere to take Father Stefan. The sisters placed his coffin in the churchyard near the fence. The church elder Shakhvorostov came, and the exiled old priest Father Athanasius, who was also in Almaty, came. The church was sealed, but through a passage that led from the basement to the altar and the sacristy, I climbed up and brought out the Gospel, the cross, the censer, and the necessary vestments. Mother Feodora ordered us to take everything of the best quality. Then the sisters shielded the coffin with sheets, and right there on the street, among the snowdrifts, Father Athanasius and elder Shakhvorostov anointed Father Stefan with myrrh and vested him. They placed a cross in his hand, the Gospel on his chest, and the censer — everything as it should be... People from the GPU came and ordered us to quickly close the coffin lid so that no one would see that we were burying a priest... We put the coffin on a cart, and a horse borrowed from the neighbors took us up the hill. We walked behind the coffin and cried. Matron Paraskeva Kuzminichna wept bitterly... We brought Father Stefan to the camp cemetery. There was no one to carry the coffin. The sisters and elder Shakhvorostov pushed the coffin through the snow to Father Philip’s grave. The ground was frozen solid. We didn't have the strength to dig a new grave. We removed the earth from Father Philip's fresh grave, dug a trench on the southern side of his coffin, and slid the coffin with Father Stefan’s body into it. We buried Father Alexander the same way...".

The memory of the holy martyrs of Nikolo-Kuchugury was faithfully preserved by their flock, and a gravestone was laid on their grave. In the 1960s, during the construction of the city, the grave of the holy martyrs was destroyed, and the location of their holy relics is unknown.

On December 29, 1992, Father Stefan was rehabilitated by the General Prosecutor's Office of Kazakhstan.

The holy martyrs Alexander, Stefan, and Philip were canonized for local veneration on February 14, 1999. They were glorified among the saints of the Russian New Martyrs by the Bishops' Council of the Russian Orthodox Church in August 2000 for general veneration, with a collective commemoration established on January 4.