Venerable Martyr Tavrion (Tolokontsev)

Venerable Martyr Tavrion, born Matvei Grigoryevich Tolokontsev on 5 August 1871 into a peasant family in Vologda province, entered the Valaam Monastery in 1908 and was tonsured a monk with the name Tavrion at its Moscow dependency in 1920.

After the dependency was closed in 1925, he sang in the choir of the Church of the Rzhev Icon in Moscow, living with other Valaam monks as a small community. In 1930 they were arrested; asked what he intended to do, Tavrion replied, "As long as the Church exists, I will serve her." He was exiled for three years to the Vologda region and later settled in Veliky Ustyug at the invitation of Archbishop Pitirim (Krylov).

In autumn 1937 he tried in vain to obtain the reopening of a closed church where he hoped to serve. Arrested on 3 December 1937, he denied any counter-revolutionary activity and was sentenced to ten years in a labour camp. He died on 7 June 1939 (25 May Old Style) in the Novoozersky labour colony, housed in the buildings of the ruined Novoozersky monastery, and was buried in an unmarked grave. Feast: 25 May (7 June); also in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church and the Synaxis of the Saints of Valaam.