Sergius (Srebriansky)

Sergius (Srebriansky), born Mitrofan Vasilyevich Srebriansky, was a Russian Orthodox priest, military chaplain, and later schema-archimandrite venerated as a confessor among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia. He was born on 1 August 1870 in the village of Trekhsvyatskoye in the Voronezh Governorate of the Russian Empire, the son of a parish priest. After studies at the Voronezh Theological Seminary he married Olga Vladimirovna and was ordained to the priesthood, beginning his ministry in the closing years of the nineteenth century.

During the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905 he served as a military chaplain with a dragoon regiment in the Far East, remaining with the soldiers through campaign conditions and receiving awards for his pastoral care. In 1908 Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna invited him to become the senior priest and confessor of the Martha and Mary Convent of Mercy in Moscow, which she had founded to provide medical and social assistance to the poor. He served at the convent until it was closed after the Bolshevik Revolution; the Grand Duchess herself was arrested in 1918 and subsequently killed.

Under Soviet rule Father Mitrofan was arrested more than once and experienced exile and limitations on his ministry, in common with many Orthodox clergy of the period. He and his wife both entered the monastic life; he received the name Sergius and later the great schema, becoming Schema-Archimandrite Sergius. In his later years he lived in the village of Vladychnya in what was then Kalinin Oblast, continuing to offer spiritual counsel insofar as the authorities permitted.

He died in Vladychnya on 5 April 1948. At the Jubilee Bishops’ Council of 2000 the Russian Orthodox Church glorified him as a holy confessor. His feast is observed on 5 April, and he is also commemorated with the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia. Relics connected with him are venerated in the Tver region.