Venerable Seraphim (Romantsov) of Glinsk

Venerable Seraphim (Ivan Romanovich Romantsov) was born on 28 June 1885 in Kursk province into a peasant family and entered the Glinsk Hermitage as a novice. Wounded in the First World War, he returned to the monastery and in 1919 was tonsured with the name Juvenal under the guidance of Hieromonk Aristoclius. After Glinsk was closed in 1922 he lived at the Dranda Monastery near Sukhumi, where in 1926 he was ordained hieromonk and received the great schema with the name Seraphim.

Afterwards he was arrested and sent to build the White Sea Canal. Released in 1934 without papers, he lived for years in hiding with a devout family in Tashkent and in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan, and after the war served for about a year as confessor at the cathedral in Tashkent. Returning to the reopened Glinsk Hermitage at the end of 1947, he became its confessor in 1948, receiving crowds of pilgrims and answering letters at night. After Glinsk was closed again in 1961 he moved to Sukhumi, where he was raised to schema-archimandrite in 1975. He died on 1 January 1976 and was glorified among the Glinsk elders in 2009; he is commemorated in the Synaxis of Glinsk Saints on 9 (22) September.