Igor Aleksandrovich Akulov was born in the village of Novo-Nikitskoye in Tver Province in Russia, into a family of Orthodox peasants. In 1918 he graduated from the regular high school. After 1920 he was a postulant at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery, and he studied at the Petrograd Theological Institute. He was tonsured as a monk with the name Epiphany on the 2nd of July 1921. After he met Blessed Leonid Feodorov he joined the Catholic Church. In the summer of 1922 he was ordained an Eastern Rite Catholic priest. After August, 1922, he was Vicar of the Byzantine Rite parish of the Descent of the Holy Spirit in Petrograd. He was arrested in 1923, and in 1924 he was sentenced to ten years of prison. In 1927 he was freed before his sentence was up and sent to a camp. In 1933 he was freed from the camp and he served in various churches in St. Petersburg. In 1935 he was arrested again for a short time. In 1937 he was arrested under a false charge, sentenced to be shot, and then shot on the 25th of August 1937. He was buried in the Levashov area, a piece of waste property outside the city. In 1989 he received posthumous rehabilitation.
Among the faithful of St. Petersburg the memory of the martyrdom of Fr. Epiphany is kept, as a certainty to his sanctity.
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