Saint Hieromartyr Barlaam Ryashentsev, Archbishop
of Perm.

Barlaam was born in 1878 in Tambov, Russia, to a priestly family. He received a theological education befitting his calling and showed early promise as a scholar and defender of Orthodox Christianity. Before the Revolution, he became associated with the Moscow Theological Academy and authored several theological works, including treatises against theosophism and critiques of rationalist authors such as Renan.

From December 1924 for a year, Bishop Barlaam served as bishop of Mogilev in the South. By July 13, 1927, he was bishop of Perm. On January 24 / February 6, 1928, Archbishop Seraphim, together with Metropolitan Agathangel of Yaroslavl, Metropolitan Joseph of Petrograd, Archbishop Barlaam of Perm and Bishop Eugene of Rostov, wrote an epistle rejecting the declaration of Metropolitan Sergius that placed the Church in submission to the godless Soviet state.

In 1930, for his opposition to Metropolitan Sergius, he was arrested and imprisoned, and his sufferings began in earnest - lasting, with short intervals of relative freedom in exile, for the rest of his much-suffering life. In 1931 he was in Solovki, and in 1933 on Bear Mountain near Petrozavodsk, enduring the hardships of Soviet concentration camps.

New Hieromartyr Barlaam (Ryashentsev), archbishop of Perm, reposed in 1942. Like countless other hierarchs and clergy, he died under the persecution of the Soviet regime, his earthly life a martyrdom of faith. Barlaam archbishop of Perm, New Hieromartyr, February 7, according to the listing of New Martyrs glorified in the Russian Orthodox Church's calendar.

The New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Orthodox Church is a group of saints of the Russian Orthodox Church martyred or persecuted after the October Revolution of 1917. The Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia glorified the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia in 1981. In 2000, the All-Russian Council glorified Tsar Nicholas II and his family, as well as many other New Martyrs. Archbishop Barlaam is commemorated among this great multitude of confessors who witnessed to Orthodox Christianity even unto death.

The Russian Church celebrates the feast of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia on the Sunday nearest January 25 (o.s.) / February 7 (n.s.) -- the date Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev's martyrdom (the first Hieromartyr under Bolshevik rule of Russia following the October Revolution). Archbishop Barlaam's feast on February 7 commemorates his union with the entire assembly of New Martyrs who refused to compromise the faith.