New Hieromartyr Nicodemus, Bishop of Belgorod

Nicodemus, born Alexander Kononov in 1871 in a village of the Mezen district in Russia’s far north, studied at the St Petersburg Theological Academy and became a monk in 1896. He headed the seminaries of Kaluga and Petrozavodsk and from 1913 was bishop of Belgorod, a vicar of the Kursk diocese.

On Orthodox Christmas, 7 January 1919, the Cheka arrested him in the altar of his church. Believers won his release for a day, but he was seized again and shot in Belgorod on 10 January 1919 (28 December 1918 by the church calendar), aged 47. The deacon Arcadius is remembered with him.