Venerable Martyr
Venerable Martyr Lev (Egorov)
1889 — 1937
Also known as: Архимандрит Лев (Егоров), Леонид Михайлович Егоров, Прмч. Лев (Егоров), архимандрит, Сщмч. Лев (Егоров)
Archimandrite of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra, missionary and co-founder of the Alexander Nevsky Brotherhood in Petrograd; after years of exile and labour camps he was shot in the Siberian camp system in 1937.
Leonid Mikhailovich Egorov was born in 1889 in Novgorod province; his brother was the future Metropolitan Gury (Egorov). A graduate of St Petersburg University, he became a monk of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra in 1915 with the name Lev and was ordained priest.
From 1916 he did missionary work among the workers and poor of Petrograd, and in 1919, with the support of Metropolitan Veniamin (Kazansky), he co-founded the Alexander Nevsky Brotherhood, leading its religious education of children. Arrested in 1922, he spent two years in exile; in 1926 he became rector of the Feodorovsky Cathedral in Leningrad and an archimandrite.
Arrested again in 1932, he was sentenced to ten years in the Siberian camps, where he worked in a mine. In September 1937 he was accused of anti-Soviet agitation among the prisoners, refused to plead guilty or name anyone, and was shot on 20 September 1937. He was glorified among the New Martyrs in 2003. Feast: 7 (20) September.