Hieromonks
Saint Varlaam (in the world Vasily Yefimovich Konoplev) was born in 1858 in the Yugo-Knauf factory of the Osinsky district of the Perm province in a peasant family of Old Believers without priests. From a young age, he sought the truth, prayed a lot, and contemplated faith, the schism, and the Orthodox Eastern Church.
In the 1890s, after a miraculous event, he joined the Orthodox Church through the sacrament of chrismation, along with his father and brothers. In November 1893, he was tonsured into the rassophore and settled on the White Mountain, where he began to gather those wishing to live the monastic life.
On February 1, 1894, he accepted monastic tonsure with the name Varlaam, and on February 22, he was ordained as a hieromonk. He became the head of the newly built missionary monastery on the White Mountain, restored the Orthodox canonical Divine Services and preaching.
In 1917, the consecration of the Belogorsky Cathedral took place in the monastery, which gathered many pilgrims. However, in August 1918, the Bolsheviks seized the monastery, desecrated the cathedral, and arrested Archimandrite Varlaam, who was shot on August 12 (25). Many monks also met a martyr's end.
In 1998, they were glorified as locally revered saints of the Perm diocese and were canonized among the ranks of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia in August 2000 for church-wide veneration.
