Zelentsov Vasily Ivanovich (Bishop Vasily)

Year of birth: 1870 Place of birth: Ryazan province., Ranenburg district, with. Zimarovo. Higher education. Graduated from the Faculty of Law of the University, St. Petersburg Theological Academy. Theology Ph.D. He was a teacher at the Yekaterinoslav Theological Seminary, and then a diocesan missionary at Yekaterinoslav. He was a member of the All-Russian Local Council 1917-1918, as a layman from the Ryazan diocese. After the cathedral he was a missionary in the Poltava diocese. Since 1920 - the second priest, then - rector of the Holy Trinity Church in the city of Poltava. Took four orphans as dependents.
He was arrested on May 30, 1922 in Poltava and, at a show trial on August 12, 1922, was sentenced to death by the provincial revolutionary tribunal. Thanks to the protest filed by the faithful workers in the name of V. I. Lenin, the execution was replaced by five years in prison. He was imprisoned in the Kharkov prison, released in 1925 under an amnesty. He took with him the child of a deceased beggar woman (who was begging near the prison building) and raised him along with four other children. In 1925 he was tonsured a monk. From August 25, 1925 - Bishop of Pryluky, vicar of the Poltava diocese. In September 1926, he was arrested in Kharkov (in Poltava, the authorities were afraid to do this, fearing the indignation of the people, mostly workers) and sentenced to 3 years in the camps. He served his term in Solovki. One of the authors of the Epistle of the Solovetsky bishops imprisoned in the Solovetsky camp of the OGPU, drawn up in connection with the declaration of Metropolitan Sergius, which contained an appeal to openly declare to the Bolshevik government that "the Church cannot tolerate interference in the area of ​​purely church relations by a state hostile to religion." After being released from the camp in November 1928, he was sent into exile in the Irkutsk region. He lived in the village of Pyanovo in the Bratsk region. In August 1929, he wrote a large work criticizing the activities of Metropolitan Sergius. This manuscript, among other things, spoke of the need to fight against the Soviet regime. The manuscript was reproduced by believers and distributed. Shortly thereafter, he was arrested. Transferred to the Butyrka prison in Moscow. Convicted on 02/03/1930 by the Collegium of the OGPU for obv. in counter-revolutionary activities to the VMN. Shot by Chekists on 02/07/1930 in Moscow. Secretly buried at the Vagankovsky cemetery. Rehabilitated on 06/03/1989. Canonized by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church as a locally venerated saint in 1997. He was ranked by the Russian Orthodox Church as the Holy New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia in 2000.