New Hieromartyr Pimen of Vernensk

Pimen (Belolikov), Bishop of Vernensk and Semirechensk, was a hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church killed during the Soviet persecution in 1918. He is numbered among the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia and is commemorated on September 3. Born Pyotr Zakharyevich Belolikov, he served for years as a missionary in Persia before being consecrated bishop and sent to Central Asia, where his ministry at Verny brought him into open opposition to the early Soviet authorities.

He was born on November 5, 1879, in the village of Vasilyevskoye in the Cherepovets district of Novgorod province, the son of the priest Zakhary Belolikov. He completed the Novgorod Theological Seminary in 1900 and then the Kyiv Theological Academy, from which he graduated with distinction in 1904. He took monastic vows in 1903, receiving the name Pimen, and was ordained a hieromonk in 1904.

Much of Pimen's early ministry was spent at the Russian Orthodox Mission in Urmia, in northwest Persia, where he served for several years, learned Syriac and Turkic dialects, taught in the mission school, and was associated with the mission's publishing work. He later held seminary appointments in Russia before his episcopal consecration in 1916, when he was first assigned as a bishop in connection with the Urmia Mission. In 1917 he was transferred to the see of Verny (later Alma-Ata) and Semirechensk in Turkestan, arriving in his new diocese on October 11, 1917.