Archbishop
Saint Procopius was born in 1877 in a priest's family in Kuznetsk. In 1901, he graduated from the Kazan Theological Academy and was tonsured into monasticism with the name Procopius. He served in the Tomsk Church Teacher's School and later taught at the Irkutsk Theological Seminary. In 1914, he was consecrated as the Bishop of Yelisavetgrad.
From 1918, he became the Bishop of Nikolaev, and in 1921, he was appointed the Bishop of Kherson and Odessa. In the conditions of persecution against the Russian Orthodox Church, he demonstrated selfless service. On February 16, 1923, he was arrested and imprisoned. His release was sought by the faithful, but he was sentenced to death, later commuted to exile.
In 1925, he became the Archbishop of Odessa. In 1926, he was arrested again and sent to the Solovetsky concentration camp. In 1931, he was arrested once more and exiled to the Urals. In 1934, after his release, he was arrested again and sentenced to exile in Kazakhstan.
In 1937, he was arrested for organizing an illegal prayer meeting. On October 28, the NKVD troika sentenced him to death. Archbishop Procopius was executed on November 23, 1937, and buried in a common unmarked grave.
