NEW MARTYR ALEXIS VOROSHIN (+ 1937)

By Vladimir Moss

Alexis Ivanovich Vorshin was born in 1886 in the village of Kaurchikha, Yuryevetsky uyezd, Kostroma province, in the family of a church warden. For one year he was a novice in the Trinity Krivoyezerskaya desert. In 1928 he took upon himself the exploit of being a fool-for-Christ. By his behaviour he foretold events that would happen in the life of villagers: arrests, illnesses, the deaths of close ones. He was often put in a psychiatric hospital, but every time the doctors recognized him to be normal. In May, 1937 he was put in prison in Kineshma among the criminals. He prayed constantly, almost never slept, and gave away his meagre rations to others. The interrogators resorted to torture, putting his naked feet on a red-hot plate. Exhausted by tortures, the blessed one was put into the prison hospital, where he died in 1937. He was buried in the cemetery of Kineshma. On September 25, 1985, when the cemetery was being moved, his relics were uncovered. The circumstances of his death were revealed to Alexis Ivanovich fifteen years before it took place.