Yevgeny Rodionov, a soldier from Russia was captivated by Chechen muslims and was executed (beheaded), when he denied to remove the Christian Cross from his neck and become himself a muslim. Chechens told Yevgeny’s mother what happened and sold her his body and head. Yevgeny was awarded the Order of Courage post mortem.

When the story became widely known in Russia, people started to consider Yevgeny a saint. The Synod of the Church in Russia did not decide to canonize Yevgeny as a saint. At least one of the reasons of this denial, that “the period of new martyrs ended with the collapse of the Bolshevik regime”, is just foolish. Whenever people are persecuted for their faith and refuse to deny the Christ, we will have martyrs. That Yevgeny died in a war, is also not a solid enough argument, since he did not die in the war, but in captivity, and not as a military opponent, but as a Christian.

Yevgeny (Eugene) comes from the Greek Eugenios, meaning “a person of noble origin.”

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