He was returning from his priestly duties in the evening of May 21 when a tire burst and his car veered into the oncoming lane, striking another car head-on. He had to be cut out of the totaled car by Emergency Services. With shattered legs and a heart swollen from bruising, Fr. Igor asked only about the fate of the other driver, ignoring his own pain. 

He was immediately operated on in the hospital, but his heart gave out, and he died the next day. 

Matushka Ksenia now has to take care of their six children, including two underage children, by herself. The older children are doing well in school, and Matushka works as a Sunday School teacher at the church in Yaroslavl. 

Archpriest Igor Klokov was born on October 23, 1970. He was brought up in a secular family, with no experience of Church life. After graduating from high school, the brilliant future pastor went to Yaroslavl State University to study mathematics, where he met his future wife, Ksenia. 

Igor was very successful in his studies, and upon graduation, he was offered to go to the United States for a year-long internship. But he was more devoted to his wife and the young child they had by that point, and he refused. It wasn’t possible to take them with him, and he wasn’t willing to leave them on their own. 

Instead of going to an American university, he wound up in the backwater village of Poshekhonsky in a house with no amenities, 10 miles from the nearest bus stop and the local school where the future priest taught half the subjects. Few teachers were willing to endure such conditions with the small salary the school could offer. 

Later, Igor was blessed for the priestly path, and he went. And Matushka Ksenia always helped him in everything. 

They led a hard life. There were times when they barely had enough money for food. They had no car, and Father had to travel all around either on foot, on horseback, or on skis. Matushka learned how to milk a cow and wash clothes in a water hole. 

But Fr. Igor was able to attract parishioners, and a community was formed. They had a Sunday School and a choir. Father and Matushka served there for four years, during which time Fr. Igor continued going to Yaroslavl to teach. 

In 2003, he was appointed rector of the Church of the Martyr Nikita. During the years of Soviet rule, there had been warehouses, a bakery, and sewing workshops in the church, and when Fr. Igor was sent, the church had been reduced to just three walls. Its restoration required great effort from Fr. Igor and the community. 

Father wasn’t a businessman—he was a man of prayer. He didn’t know how to find sponsors and raise money. If something went wrong, he read an akathist, and somehow everything always worked out—they had enough money, building materials, and manpower. 

Fr. Igor was a very humble, very joyful, very bright, and very hardworking priest and confessor. And he was very reliable—parishioners could call him at three in the morning, five in the morning—and he would get up and go hear their confession and give them Communion. 

He was quite exhausted, but he never complained.