The Martyr Arefa (Arefy) Petrovich Eryomkin was born in 1884 in the village of Krasivka, Narovchat Uyezd, Penza Governorate. He received no education and spent his whole life engaged in peasant labor. He had a wife, Fyokla, and five sons.
In 1937 he was arrested on suspicion of counter-revolutionary activity and was accused, together with other peasants, of gathering to listen to readings from Holy Scripture and books of religious content. This was true, since Arefa Petrovich was illiterate and could hear the word of God only when others read it aloud. He was accused of interpreting what had been read in a counter-revolutionary spirit. Arefa Petrovich did not admit his guilt. On August 10, 1937, he was shot by sentence of the troika attached to the NKVD of the Mordovian ASSR.
He was glorified among the saints by the Bishops’ Council of the Russian Orthodox Church in 2000.
