People Who Should Be Canonized: A Thread

1. Seraphim Rose was an American hieromonk of the ROCOR and co-founder of the St Herman of Alaska Monastery in Platina, California. A convert to Orthodoxy and a traditionalist, Rose defended the aerial toll houses and creationism. He was very close with St John Maximovitch.

2. Christopher Reuben Spartas was a Ugandan convert to Orthodox Christianity. After being ordained a bishop, he became the first canonical bishop of the Ugandan Orthodox Church. He spread Orthodoxy all throughout East Africa. He also helped found many English-language schools.

3. Olga Michael was a native Alaskan of Yup’ik origin. A priest’s wife, she was known for her empathy and for her care of the poorer, often giving away her own clothes to the needy. Many miracles are attributed to her. In her village of Kwethluk, she is venerated by the faithful.

4. Archbishop Dmitri was a hierarch of the OCA. Known as “Apostle to the South”, he was well known for his missionary efforts among Mexicans and Mexican-Americans. He translated many Orthodox liturgical and theological works into Spanish. His relics are incorrupt.

5. Elder Ephraim was an abbot of Philotheou Monastery on Mount Athos and a founder of several monasteries throughout the United States. A hiermonk for 71 years, he was a disciple of St Joseph the Hesychast and lived in monastic obedience to him for 12 years.

6. Paul Sawabe was a samurai warrior-priest. Armed with a sword, he confronted St Nicholas of Japan, planning to kill him. However, after talking with Nicholas, he converted to Christianity. He became the first native Japanese priest and spread the faith throughout Japan.

7. Theoclitos Triantafilides was the first Orthodox priest in Texas. His parish was composed of Greeks, Serbs, Russians, Lebanese, and Syrians. He was one of the first Orthodox priests in America to actively proselytize Americans.

8. Nicola Yanney was a Lebanese Orthodox missionary in America and the first priest ordained by St Raphael of Brooklyn. He ministered to Orthodox communities in nineteen US states. He died in 1918 from the Spanish Flu. A book called “Apostle to the Plains” is about his life.

9. Ilia Zotikov was a seminary classmate of the future American missionaries and hieromartyrs Alexander Hotovitsky and John Kochurov. St Alexander referred to Fr Ilia as “my best friend”. After being arrested in 1930 for being Orthodox, he was executed by a firing squad.

10. Jacob Korchinsky was a Russian missionary who converted hundreds of Alaskan natives to Orthodoxy and served as the first resident priest in Canada. He served as a missionary in Australia and Hawaii. After returning to Ukraine, he was executed by the Bolsheviks in 1941.

11. Joseph Xanthopoulos was a Greek priest serving under St. Raphael’s Syro-Arab Mission. Because he related to his Antiochian parishioners so well, many mistook him for half Syrian. He started women’s organizations at his parishes and encouraged women to sing in the choir.

12. Chrysostomos Papasarantopoulos was a Greek priest and a missionary of Orthodoxy in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, and the Congo. He taught himself Swahili and French. His entire time in Africa, he took no salary, devoting himself totally to the salvation of souls.

13. Pallady Kafarov of Beijing was a priest and leader of the Russian Orthodox mission in China. Spending 33 years in China, he translated the Scripturess into Chinese and developed a Cyrillization system for the Chinese language, known as the Palladius system.

14. Innocent Figurovsky was the Metropolitan of Beijing and China. Born in Siberia, he led the Russian Orthodox mission in China for 35 years. He established Chinese as the language for services and preached the Gospel throughout Beijing. He barely survived the Boxer Rebellion.

15. Daniel Sysoev was a Russian Orthodox priest. Known for his missionary activity among Russia’s Muslim and neo-Pagan communities, he was martyred in his church by a Muslim gunman in 2009. An Islamic terrorist group from the North Caucasus took credit for the murder.

16. Elder Isaac Atallah was a Lebanese Orthodox monk of the Monastery of Stavronikita on Mount Athos. A disciple of Saint Paisios, he wrote a biography of his (which has been translated into many languages). He is widely venerated in Lebanon and Syria.

17. King Harold II was the last crowned Anglo-Saxon king of England. Dying on the field of battle at Hastings in 1066 after the invasion by William the Bastard, he is regarded by some Orthodox Christians as a passion-bearer and as the last Orthodox king of England.

18. John Karastamatis was the first parish priest of the Prophet Elias Greek Orthodox Church in Santa Cruz, California. He ministered to the unemployed, homeless, and drug addicts of the city. Murdered in 1985, he is venerated as a hieromartyr by the faithful in California.

19. José Muñoz-Cortés, a Chilean convert to Orthodoxy, was a monk and the keeper of the wonderworking Iveron icon. A talented iconographer and a man of much prayer, he was tortured and brutally murdered in a hotel room in Greece in 1997. The Iveron icon is missing to this day.

20. Phillip Ludwell III was a Virginian who is the earliest known Orthodox Christian in the Americas, converting in 1738. He went on to translate into English the three principal Orthodox liturgies, morning and evening prayers, the confession of Peter Mogila, and more.

21. Paul de Ballester-Convallier was a Spanish Capuchin monk who converted to Orthodoxy and became the bishop of Nazianzus in Mexico. In addition to his pastoral activities, he was a historian, fluent in 8 languages. In 1984, he was killed by a mentally ill man.

22. Elder Sampson Sievers was a Russian Orthodox hieromonk. Of English descent, he was imprisoned multiple times by the Bolsheviks because of his popularity among the locals. In 1979, he passed away peacefully.

23. Philaret Voznesensky was the first hierarch of the ROCOR. A strong defender of Orthodoxy against communism, the Soviets tried to take attempt to burn him alive in his monastic cell but he survived, passing away peacefully in 1985. His relics are incorrupt.

24. Yevgeny Rodionov was a Russian soldier taken captive by Chechen Muslims in 1996. After refusing to denounce Christianity and convert to Islam, he was tortured, eventually being beheaded. Although not officially canonized, he is widely venerated as a New Martyr in Russia.

25. Tsar Paul reigned as Emperor of Russia between 1796 and 1801. A very pious man, he was often in prayer. He reduced serfs workloads and taxes, allowing them to appeal directly to him. After campaigning for peace in wartime Europe, he was martyred.

http://www.holy-transfiguration.org/library_en/royal_paul.html

26. Arsenie Boca was a Romanian monk, theologian, and muralist. Persecuted by the communist regime, his grave at Prislop Monastery in Silvașu de Sus is visited by tens of thousands of pilgrims every year, where many miracles occur. The flowers over his grave never die or wither.

27. Richeldis de Faverches was a devout Saxon noblewoman who had a vision of our Blessed Lady and is credited with establishing the original shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham in 1061 AD in England right before the Norman invasion.

28. Arseny (Chahovtsov) was Bishop of Winnipeg and Canada from 1926 until 1937. Abp Arseny already enjoys veneration in the OCA's Archdiocese of Canada. I can’t do him justice in one tweet, so I would suggest reading on his life here:

http://orthodoxcanada.ca/Saint_Arseny_(Chahovtsov)

29. Cleopa Ilie was a very well-known monk and representative of the Romanian Orthodox Church. He was a strong defender of the traditional Orthodox lifestyle. Patriarch Daniel of Romania had Fr Cleopa as his "monastic godfather".

https://www.acrod.org/readingroom/saints/elder-cleopa