1859 – 1918
Abbess of the Therapontov Convent, martyred in the Soviet persecution (1918)
The Holy New Martyr Seraphima (Sulimova), Abbess of the Therapontov Convent
Seraphima (Sulimova) was the abbess of the Therapontov Convent in the Russian North who was shot during the Soviet persecution of 1918. She is counted among the Synaxis of New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia and is commemorated on September 2.
Born Elizabeth Nikolaevna Sulimova in 1859 in the town of Ustyuzhna, in the Cherepovets district of the Novgorod province, she entered the Leushinsky Convent at the age of seventeen and was clothed as a novice in 1884. In 1901 she was tonsured to the little schema and given the name Seraphima. She was sent to the Therapontov Convent as its superior in 1905 and was formally elevated to the rank of abbess on July 2, 1906.
According to her life, as abbess she established handicraft classes for young women and oversaw the building of a parish school in 1909, while devoting herself to charity for poor families and homeless women. She was put to death in 1918 together with Barsanuphius (Lebedev), Bishop of Kirillov, and a number of others associated with the Cyril of White Lake (Kirillov) Monastery; the tradition relates that before she was shot she asked forgiveness of her executioners.
Seraphima was executed by shooting in 1918, during the wave of persecution that followed the Russian Revolution. She suffered together with Barsanuphius (Lebedev), Bishop of Kirillov, who is commemorated on the same day, and with a group of laymen connected to the Cyril of White Lake Monastery, named in the tradition as Anatole, Nicholas, Michael, and Philip. The synaxarion relates that she asked her executioners for forgiveness before she was shot.
Among the Synaxis of New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia