Saint Serafim Ostroumov

Serafin, secular name Mikhail Ostroumov (born 6 November 1880 in Moscow, died 8 December 1937 in Katyn forest) was a Russian Orthodox bishop and saint New Martyr. The son of a church psalmist, he graduated from the Moscow Theological Seminary and later the Moscow Theological Academy. From 1906 to 1914, he served as the superior of the St. Onuphrius Monastery in Jabłeczna, contributing to its development as a religious and educational center. In 1914, he briefly led the Orthodox Theological Seminary in Chełm before evacuating to Moscow in 1915. On 3 April 1916, he was consecrated as Bishop of Biała Podlaska, vicar of the Eparchy of Chełm. In 1917, he became the ordinary of the Eparchy of Oryol. From 1922 to 1924, he was imprisoned for opposing the confiscation of Russian Orthodox Church property. From 1927 to 1936, he served as the ordinary of the Diocese of Smolensk, where he unsuccessfully resisted the anti-religious policies of the Soviet authorities. Arrested in 1936 and accused of leading a counter-revolutionary group, he was initially sentenced to imprisonment. In 1937, after a renewed investigation, he was sentenced to death and executed, likely in the Katyn forest. In 2001, the Russian Orthodox Church canonized him as a saint New Martyr. Serafin was born into the family of church psalmist Mitrofan Ostroumov, who served in a parish church in Moscow. He completed lower theological education at the Monastery of the Holy Mandylion, followed by the Moscow Theological Seminary in 1900 and the Moscow Theological Academy in 1904. On 14 September 1904, he took monastic vows before Bishop Tryphon Turkestanov at the Epiphany Monastery in Moscow. In September 1904, he was successively ordained as a hierodeacon and then a hieromonk. Immediately after his ordination, he went to the Optina Monastery, where he worked in the monastery kitchen and served as a canonarch.