Hieromartyr Seraphim (Samoilovich) Archbishop of Uglich

Seraphim (Samoilovich) was a Russian hierarch who began his ministry as a missionary teacher in Alaska and ended it as a confessor and martyr under Soviet persecution. Born Semyon Nikolayevich Samoilovich on July 19, 1881, at Myrgorod in the Poltava governorate, he graduated from the Poltava Theological Seminary in 1902 and was sent that same year to North America to teach in the diocese then administered by the future Patriarch Tikhon. He is commemorated on November 4 (October 22 Old Style), the day of his death.

After several years in the Aleutian Islands and Alaska he returned to Russia, served in a succession of monastic and diocesan posts, and was consecrated Bishop of Uglich in 1920. Raised to the rank of archbishop by Patriarch Tikhon in 1924, he became one of the senior hierarchs entrusted with the administration of the Russian Church during the chaotic years that followed the patriarch's death, briefly serving as Deputy Patriarchal Locum Tenens in 1926–1927.

When Metropolitan Sergius issued his 1927 Declaration affirming the loyalty of the Church to the Soviet state, Seraphim refused to accept it and became a leading voice of the so-called Yaroslavl Opposition. His repeated public criticism of that policy led to a series of arrests, exiles, and imprisonments that occupied the last decade of his life. He was shot in a labor camp in 1937 and was numbered among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, his general veneration approved in August 2000.