Alexander Minervin

Saint Hieromartyr Alexander Minervin (1888 to 1938) was a priest in the village of Varvarino, in the Podolsk district, and was shot on 17 February 1938, at Butovo. He is commemorated on 17 February, on 29 May with the new martyrs of Butovo, and on 5 September with the saints of Moscow.

He was born on 22 May 1888 in the village of Petrovskoe, Bronnitsy district, Moscow province, into the family of the priest Peter Pavlovich Minervin. In 1904 he finished the church school in Kolomna, and in 1912 the Moscow seminary, and was ordained priest. In the time of the persecutions of the thirties he served at the church of the Nativity of Christ in the village of Varvarino, Podolsk district. Like almost all village priests, he had a small peasant holding, which the authorities confiscated in 1930. In that same year he was brought to account and fined fifty rubles for having conducted the funeral of a deceased parishioner for whom he had not received papers from the civil registry.

On 21 January 1938 he was arrested and imprisoned at Taganka in Moscow. The investigator asked whether he admitted guilt of anti-⁠Soviet agitation, and he answered no. At another interrogation, asked whether he agreed with the policy of the Soviet authorities, he said that the main difference of views from the Soviet authorities and the Communist Party was that he did not agree with the policy of mass repressions of clergy, of forced closing of churches and of imposing anti-⁠religious views on believers. Asked whether he admitted guilt of systematic counter-⁠revolutionary activity among believers, he answered no. On 2 February 1938 the NKVD troika sentenced him to death. Father Alexander Minervin was shot on 17 February 1938 and buried in an unmarked common grave at the Butovo firing range near Moscow.