The life of St Tikhon of Moscow
In November 1917, weeks after the Bolsheviks seized power, a council restored the Moscow Patriarchate after two centuries without one, and Tikhon was chosen by the drawing of lots as the first Patriarch of the new era. He led the Church through civil war, famine, and organized persecution, publicly condemning the killing of the imperial family and resisting the confiscation of church property, for which he was placed under house arrest and later imprisoned for over a year. A rival, state-favored faction meanwhile attempted to seize control of Church administration. Though he sought some reconciliation with the Soviet state in his final years, he never surrendered the Church's essential freedom. Worn down by these years of strain, he fell ill, served his last liturgy in early April 1925, and died two days later in Moscow, mourned by enormous crowds who came to bid him farewell. The Church has honored him since as a confessor of the faith under a government hostile to it.
