St. Tikhon of Moscow (1865-1925)

Vasily Bellavin, a village priest’s son who became bishop of the Aleutians and North America from 1898 to 1907, moved its see to New York, built St Nicholas Cathedral there and founded St Tikhon’s Monastery in Pennsylvania. In November 1917, eleven days after the Bolsheviks took power, the restored Council of the Russian Church elected him Patriarch of Moscow, the first in two centuries, and he led the Church through the first years of the persecution. He anathematised those who shed innocent blood, protested the seizure of church valuables in 1922, was arrested and held for a year, and was kept under watch in the Donskoy Monastery until his death on the Annunciation in 1925. Glorified by the Church Abroad in 1981 and by Moscow in 1989. Feast: March 25 (on the Old Calendar, 7 April).