Gideon, Peter, Nicetas And Tiburtius ,Hieromartyrs And Those With Them

When the future Fr. Gideon was still a child, a fool-for-Christ said about him:

"Grisha will not feed his parents with bread. He will" - at this point he began to chant - "Lord, have mercy!"

In 1931, Hieromonk Gideon and the priest Peter were the only two priests in their deanery who refused to sign the declaration of Metropolitan Sergius. After the meeting, the Bolsheviks came to take him at the house of his mother. His mother remembered his parting words for the rest of her life:

"Don't go anywhere, don't look for anyone! They've all signed! Fr. Peter and I were the only ones at the meeting of the clergy who did not put their signatures to the dishonourable document of apostasy. And now we await speedy arrest, imprisonment and execution by shooting!"

And a few days later, on Thomas Sunday, Fr. Gideon was taken away and shot. Fr. Peter was taken a little later, but in the same year.

After Fr. Gideon had been arrested, Schemamonk Mercurius settled in his house to look after his mother. And then he, too, was arrested and disappeared without trace in the camps.

"You will die a long, long way away!" a fool-for-Christ, Blessed Sergius, once said to him.

And he added: "Now everything is collectivized. And the priests have become collective farmers... Don't go to them, they have the plague, a terrible heresy!"

In the same year of 1931, recounts a witness, Hieromonk Nicetas from Simferopol, and Hierodeacon Tiburtius, came to settle in our area. Fr. Nicetas served secretly from house to house. And Fr. Tiburtius said openly that the Antichrist was already ruling. They were both betrayed and shot.

(Source: Schemamonk Epiphany (Chernov), Tserkov Katakombnaya na Zemlye Rossijskoj)