Confessor Nicholas (Mogilevsky), Metropolitan of Alma-Ata

IMPORTANT CORRECTION: the previously listed contaminated 3-date list ("December 6/May 9/July 29," belonging to St. Nicholas the Wonderworker of Myra) had nothing to do with this entirely different, 20th-century saint, and has been fully replaced. The category has been corrected from "righteous" to "confessor" — unlike the New Martyrs, he survived the persecutions and died a natural death, which is precisely what defines the category of confessor.

Confessor Nicholas, born Feodosy Nikiforovich Mogilevsky, was born on Easter Sunday, April 9, 1877, into a psalmist's family in Ekaterinoslav province. He graduated from the Ekaterinoslav Theological Seminary, taught at a church school, then in 1903 entered the Nilo-Stolobenskaya Hermitage, where in 1904 he took tonsure under the name Nicholas. He was ordained hierodeacon, then hieromonk (1905), graduated from the Moscow Theological Academy in 1911, and served as inspector and rector at several seminaries (Moscow, Poltava, Chernigov), being elevated to abbot in 1915 and archimandrite in 1916.

He was consecrated Bishop of Starodub in 1919, and over the following decades held the sees of Sosnitsa and Kashira, and administered the Tula and Oryol dioceses. From the mid-1920s through the 1940s he endured repeated arrest and persecution: arrested in 1925 (over two years' imprisonment), again in 1932 in Voronezh (five years, served in the Sarov camp), and again in 1941, followed by exile to Chelkar, Kazakhstan, from which he was released only in May 1945 — surviving the entire ordeal without execution, which is the essence of the "confessor" category as distinct from "New Martyr."

He was elevated to archbishop in 1941, and in July 1945 appointed to the restored see of Alma-Ata and Kazakhstan, where over a decade of tireless ministry he opened numerous churches and prayer houses across the diocese, being raised to metropolitan in February 1955. He died in Alma-Ata on October 25, 1955; an estimated 40,000 people attended his funeral. He was glorified as a confessor by the Bishops' Council of the Russian Orthodox Church in 2000, his relics found on September 8, 2000, and translated to St. Nicholas Cathedral in Almaty, where they rest to this day.

His feast is kept on October 12/25 (repose); also August 26/September 8 (finding of relics).