Venerable Martyr
Venerable Martyr Theodore (Bogoyavlensky)
1905 — 1943
Also known as: Прмч. Феодор (†1943), Олег Павлович Богоявленский, Феодор Балашовский, иеромонах Феодор (Богоявленский)
A hieromonk of the Vysokopetrovsky brotherhood and former medical student; after a labour camp he served as a village priest near Moscow, was arrested again in 1941 and died in Balashov prison in 1943.
Venerable Martyr Theodore (Oleg Pavlovich Bogoyavlensky) was born on 26 December 1905 in Tehran, the son of a Russian consul in Persia. After his father was killed in 1911, the family returned to Russia; Oleg grew up in Petrograd, Saratov and Moscow, where he entered the medical faculty of Moscow University in 1923 but had to leave it when his mother fell ill.
A spiritual son of Archimandrite Nikita (Kurochkin) of the Vysokopetrovsky Monastery, he was tonsured on 4 November 1930 with the name Theodore and ordained hierodeacon; the painter Pavel Korin portrayed him as "The Young Monk". Arrested in 1933, he spent three years in labour camps, where he worked as a doctor's assistant. On his release he chose the priesthood and from 1937 served as a hieromonk in village parishes near Volokolamsk. Having refused to become an informer, he was banned from the Moscow region in 1940.
Arrested on 8 July 1941, he was interrogated and beaten for about two years in Moscow and Saratov but named no one. Sentenced in June 1943 to five years of exile, he died in the prison of Balashov on 19 July 1943. He was glorified by the Jubilee Council of Bishops in 2000. Feast: 6/19 July.