Archimandrite
Saint Seraphim was born in 1877 in the city of Buzuluk, Samara province, in the family of a craftsman, Prokopy Shchelokov. After finishing the city school, he entered the Spaso-Eliazarov Great Desert Monastery in Pskov province, where he was tonsured into monasticism with the name Seraphim and was ordained as a hieromonk in 1909. In 1917, he moved to the Sedmozerskaya Mother of God Ascension Desert in Kazan province, where he labored until the closure of the desert in 1928. He was then invited to Moscow to the Holy Danilov Monastery, where in 1930 he became the acting abbot. In the same year, the monastery was closed, and Father Seraphim began to serve at the Church of the Resurrection of the Word in Danilov Sloboda.
In 1931, the OGPU conducted an operation to arrest clergymen, and Father Seraphim was arrested on April 15, imprisoned in Butyrka prison, and interrogated. He refused to cooperate with the OGPU. Ten days later, the investigation was completed, and he was accused of anti-Soviet activities. On April 30, 1931, he was sentenced to three years of exile in the Northern Territory and sent to Ust-Kulom in the Komi region.
After returning from exile, Father Seraphim settled in the city of Kashira in the Moscow region, where he began to serve in the city cathedral and was soon elevated to the rank of archimandrite. On September 10, 1937, he was arrested and imprisoned in Kashira prison. On October 19, the NKVD troika sentenced Father Seraphim to death by shooting. Archimandrite Seraphim (Shchelokov) was shot on October 21, 1937, and buried in an unknown common grave at the Butovo firing range near Moscow.
