Eastern Christianity Eastern Christianity comprises Christian traditions and church families that originally developed during classical and late antiquity in Eastern Europe, Southeastern Europe, Asia Minor, the Caucasus, Northeast Africa, the Fertile Crescent an ...

, a passion bearer ( rus, страстотéрпец, r=strastoterpets, p=strəstɐˈtʲɛrpʲɪts) is one of the various customary titles for saints used in commemoration at divine services when honouring their feast on the Church Calendar; it is not generally used by Catholics of the Roman Rite, but it is used within the

Eastern Catholic Churches The Eastern Catholic Churches or Oriental Catholic Churches, also called the Eastern-Rite Catholic Churches, Eastern Rite Catholicism, or simply the Eastern Churches, are 23 Eastern Christian autonomous ('' sui iuris'') particular churches of ...

Definition

The term can be defined as a person who faces his or her death in a Christ-like manner. Unlike

martyr A martyr (, ''mártys'', "witness", or , ''marturia'', stem , ''martyr-'') is someone who suffers persecution and death for advocating, renouncing, or refusing to renounce or advocate, a religious belief or other cause as demanded by an externa ...

s, passion bearers are not explicitly killed for their faith, though they hold to that faith with piety and true love of God. Thus, although all martyrs are passion bearers, not all passion bearers are martyrs.

In Eastern Orthodoxy

Notable passion bearers include the brothers Boris and Gleb,

Alexander Schmorell Alexander Schmorell (; russian: Александр Гугович Шморель, translit=Aleksandr Gugovich Shmorel', ; 16 September 1917 – 13 July 1943) was a Russian- German student at Munich University who, with five others, formed a resis ...

(executed for being a member of the

White Rose The White Rose (german: Weiße Rose, ) was a Nonviolence, non-violent, intellectual German resistance to Nazism, resistance group in Nazi Germany which was led by five students (and one professor) at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, ...

student movement which wrote and distributed

Samizdat Samizdat (russian: самиздат, lit=self-publishing, links=no) was a form of dissident activity across the Eastern Bloc in which individuals reproduced censored and underground makeshift publications, often by hand, and passed the document ...

that denounced

Nazism Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) i ...

), Mother Maria Skobtsova, and the entire Imperial Family of Russia, executed by the Bolsheviks on July 17, 1918.

Byzantine Catholicism

Following the

collapse of the Soviet Union The dissolution of the Soviet Union, also negatively connoted as rus, Разва́л Сове́тского Сою́за, r=Razvál Sovétskogo Soyúza, ''Ruining of the Soviet Union''. was the process of internal disintegration within the Sov ...

, the surviving Russian Catholics, many of whom were directly connected to the Greek Catholic community of Dominican Sisters founded in August 1917 by Mother Catherine Abrikosova, began to appear in the open. At the same time, the martyrology of the

Russian Greek Catholic Church The Russian Greek Catholic Church (russian: Российская греко-католическая церковь, ''Rossiyskaya greko-katolicheskaya tserkov; la, Ecclesia Graeca Catholica Russica''), Russian Byzantine Catholic Church or simply ...

began to be investigated. In 2001,

Exarch An exarch (; from Ancient Greek ἔξαρχος ''exarchos'', meaning “leader”) was the holder of any of various historical offices, some of them being political or military and others being ecclesiastical. In the late Roman Empire and ea ...

Leonid Feodorov Leonid Ivanovich Feodorov (russian: Леонид Иванович Фёдоров; 4 November 1879 – 7 March 1935) was a Studite hieromonk from the Russian Greek Catholic Church, the first Exarch of the Russian Catholic Apostolic Exarchate of R ...

was

beatified Beatification (from Latin ''beatus'', "blessed" and ''facere'', "to make”) is a recognition accorded by the Catholic Church of a deceased person's entrance into Heaven and capacity to intercede on behalf of individuals who pray in their n ...

during a

Byzantine Rite The Byzantine Rite, also known as the Greek Rite or the Rite of Constantinople, identifies the wide range of cultural, liturgical, and canonical practices that developed in the Eastern Christian Church of Constantinople. The canonical hours a ...

Divine Liturgy Divine Liturgy ( grc-gre, Θεία Λειτουργία, Theia Leitourgia) or Holy Liturgy is the Eucharistic service of the Byzantine Rite, developed from the Antiochene Rite of Christian liturgy which is that of the Ecumenical Patriarchate ...

offered in

Lviv Lviv ( uk, Львів) is the largest city in Western Ukraine, western Ukraine, and the List of cities in Ukraine, seventh-largest in Ukraine, with a population of . It serves as the administrative centre of Lviv Oblast and Lviv Raion, and is o ...

Pope John Paul II Pope John Paul II ( la, Ioannes Paulus II; it, Giovanni Paolo II; pl, Jan Paweł II; born Karol Józef Wojtyła ; 18 May 19202 April 2005) was the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 1978 until his ...

. In 2003, a

positio In the Catholic Church, a ''positio'' (''Positio super Virtutibus'') is a document or collection of documents used in the process by which a person is declared Venerable, the second of the four steps on the path to canonization as a saint. De ...

towards the Causes for

Beatification Beatification (from Latin ''beatus'', "blessed" and ''facere'', "to make”) is a recognition accorded by the Catholic Church of a deceased person's entrance into Heaven and capacity to Intercession of saints, intercede on behalf of individual ...

of six others of those whom Fr. Christopher Zugger has termed, "The Passion bearers of the Russian Catholic Exarchate":

Fabijan Abrantovich Fabian Ivanovich Abrantovich (Fabijan Abrantovič; russian: Фабиан Иванович Абрантович, be, Фабіян Янавіч Абрантовіч, pl, Fabian Abrantowicz; September 14, 1884 – January 2, 1946) was a prominent ...

Anna Abrikosova Anna Ivanovna Abrikosova (russian: Анна Ивановна Абрикосова; 23 January 1882 – 23 July 1936), later known as Mother Catherine of Siena, O.P. (russian: Екатери́на Сие́нская, transcribed Ekaterina Sienska ...

Igor Akulov Igor Alexandrovich Akulov (Epiphany, Epiphanius; 13 April 1897, Novo-Nikitskaya, Korchevsky County, province of Tver — 27 August 1937, Leningrad) originally a Russian Orthodox monk, later a priest of the Russian Catholic Church and victim of J ...

Potapy Emelianov Potapy Emelianov (c. 1889, Ufa Governorate, Russian Empire – 14 August 1936, Nadvoitsy, Segezhsky District, Karelian ASSR, USSR) was a monastic priest, or Hieromonk, from the Old Ritualist tradition within Russian Orthodoxy who entered the Ru ...

, Halina Jętkiewicz, and

Andrzej Cikoto Archmandrite Andrei Tsikota MIC ( be, Андрэй Цікота, Andrej Cikota, pl, Andrzej Cikoto, also Andrew Cikoto;

; was submitted to the

Holy See The Holy See ( lat, Sancta Sedes, ; it, Santa Sede ), also called the See of Rome, Petrine See or Apostolic See, is the jurisdiction of the Pope in his role as the bishop of Rome. It includes the apostolic episcopal see of the Diocese of R ...

's Congregation for the Causes of Saints by the Bishops of the Catholic Church in Russia.

Passion bearers

Unified Church

* Boris * Gleb * Doulas * George the Hungarian

20th century Orthodox Passion bearers

Eugene Botkin Yevgeny Sergeyevich Botkin (russian: Евгений Сергеевич Боткин; 27 March 1865 – 17 July 1918), commonly known as Eugene Botkin, was the court physician since 1908 for Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra. He sometimes ...

Romanovs The House of Romanov (also transcribed Romanoff; rus, Романовы, Románovy, rɐˈmanəvɨ) was the reigning imperial house of Russia from 1613 to 1917. They achieved prominence after the Tsarina, Anastasia Romanova, was married to t ...

(

Nicholas Nicholas is a male given name and a surname. The Eastern Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Anglican Churches celebrate Saint Nicholas every year on December 6, which is the name day for "Nicholas". In Greece, the name and its ...

Alexandra Alexandra () is the feminine form of the given name Alexander (, ). Etymologically, the name is a compound of the Greek verb (; meaning 'to defend') and (; GEN , ; meaning 'man'). Thus it may be roughly translated as "defender of man" or "p ...

Olga Olga may refer to: People and fictional characters * Olga (name), a given name, including a list of people and fictional characters named Olga or Olha * Michael Algar (born 1962), English singer also known as "Olga" Places Russia * Olga, Russia, ...

, Tatiana, Maria,

Anastasia Anastasia (from el, Ἀναστασία, translit=Anastasía) is a feminine given name of Greek origin, derived from the Greek word (), meaning " resurrection". It is a popular name in Eastern Europe, particularly in Russia, where it was the mo ...

, Alexei) *

References

Types of saints Groups of Eastern Orthodox saints {{Orthodoxy-stub