Ashap, Russia, July 15, 2019
Photo: pravperm.ru
In 1918, 15 monks were brutally executed near Perm for refusing to join the Red Army. Their names have been remembered, and now the holy martyrs are commemorated by a memorial cross on the site of their murder.
The cross was erected on June 17, the day of the Holy Spirit, in the village of Ashap in the Perm Krai, with the blessing of His Eminence Metropolitan Methodios of Perm and Kungur. The rite of consecration was celebrated by the dean of the Osinsky District Fr. Sergei Krilov and the abbot of the St. Nicholas-Belogorsk Monastery Hieromonk Dorotheos and the clergy of the deanery, reports the Perm Metropolitanate of the Russian Orthodox Church.
The event in honor of the martyrs of the Belogorsk Monastery was attended by the local district head, residents of the village of Ashap, and pilgrims from Perm.
The names of the monks are recorded in a synodikon the villagers inherited from their grandparents: Euthimy, Joseph, Dmitry, Simeon, Theodore, Jacob, Jacob, Vasily, Vasily, Peter, Panteleimon, Sergei, Arkady, Zosima, and Germogen.
St. Nicholas-Belogorsk Monastery. Photo: amusingplanet.com
In 1918, the Belgorsk monks were summoned to Ashap. There, in a house confiscated from the local priest, was a mobilization point for the Red Army. For refusing to join the ranks of the army, the monks were condemned to death. With icon weights tied to each of them, they were drowned in the nearby Kalinkin Lake.
The locals maintain a custom of going to the lake in the summer to pray for the repose of the martyred Belogorsk monks.
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