Potapy Emelianov

Potapy Emelianov was born into a family of Priestless Old Believers who were later received into the Old Ritualists by the Russian Orthodox Bishop of Ufa, Anthony (Khrapovitsky). He was tonsured and subsequently ordained as a hieromonk of the Russian Orthodox Church. When Anthony was named Metropolitan of Kiev, he brought the young hieromonk with him and assigned him to the Old Ritualist parish at Nizhnaya Bogdanovka, near Lugansk.

By 1918, Emelianov had become convinced that true Orthodoxy could not be had except through Communion with the Holy See. After learning that Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky had formed an Exarchate for Russian Rite Catholics, Emelianov travelled to St. Petersburg to meet with the Exarch, Leonid Feodorov. After questioning him closely, Feodorov received Emelianov and his entire parish into the Russian Catholic Church.

Emelianov and his parishioners underwent severe harassment and violent persecution from both the Red Guards and the White Army during the Russian Civil War. On January 27, 1927 he was arrested and on September 12, 1927 was sentenced to 10 years in prison and was sent to Solovki prison camp. Emelianov was sent to Solovki prison camp with a special purpose, where he was held with other Catholic priests and participated in religious services. In 1929, along with other Catholic priests, he was transferred to a prison camp on Anzer Island, where he was involved in secret worship. In 1932 he took place in the case of the Catholic clergy, signed on Solovki prison camp. During the interrogation, said: "The time I spent in the camp, did not shake my religious beliefs here, I became even more resistant to further Catholic me nothing can shake." As a result, the authorities have decided to subject it to special punishment contain the islands separately from other priests until the end of isolation. In November 1933 he was transferred to the station Belbaltlag Nadvoytsy, and then kept at the station Bear Mountain Kirov railway.

On August 4, 1936 Emelianov was released from the camp (probably because of a serious illness) and sent into exile. He died on August 14, 1936 at the Podvoytsy station in Karelia. Emilianov died while building the White Sea Canal.

Emelianov is greatly venerated among Russian Catholics. His cause for possible beatification opened in 2003 where he received the title of a Servant of God.

• The Life and Death of Father Potapy Emelianov (In Russian) by Pavel Parfentiev.

• Fr. Paul Mailleux, Exarch Leonid Feodorov; Bridgebuilder Between Rome and Moscow, 1964.
• Irina I. Osipova, Hide Me Within Thy Wounds; The Persecution of the Catholic Church in the USSR, Germans From Russia Heritage Collection, 2003.
• Fr. Christopher Zugger, The Forgotten; Catholics in the Soviet Empire from Lenin to Stalin, University of Syracuse Press.