Hieromonk
Saint Jonah was born on July 20, 1873, in the village of Solchino, Zaraysk district of Ryazan province, into a pious merchant family. At baptism, he was named Ioann. His father, Andrei Nikitovich Sankov, was engaged in grain trading in Moscow. In 1893, at the age of twenty, he entered as a novice in the Holy Panteleimon Monastery on Mount Athos, where he was tonsured into the mantle with the name Jonah and ordained as a hieromonk.
On March 1, 1914, Hieromonk Jonah was sent to the representation of the Panteleimon Monastery in Constantinople, where he served until the beginning of the war between Turkey and Russia in July 1914. After that, he returned to Russia and was appointed to the representation in Odessa, and then served in the Blagoveshchensk Church and in the Church of All Saints at the cemetery until these churches were closed.
In 1930, he received a letter from his native places with an offer to move to the village of Alpatyevo, where he was appointed as a priest in the Kazan Church. At the end of 1937, arrests began, and Priest Jonah was accused of counter-revolutionary agitation. On February 24, 1938, he was arrested and imprisoned in a prison in the city of Kolomna.
Among the accusations were conversations about the impending coming of the Antichrist and dissatisfaction with the existing regime. Priest Jonah did not admit his guilt. On June 7, 1938, he was sentenced to death by shooting, and on July 4, 1938, he was executed and buried in a common nameless grave at the Butovo firing range near Moscow.
