Alexander Petropavlovsky

Saint Hieromartyr Alexander Petropavlovsky (1884 to 1937) was a priest in the Yaroslavl region and was shot on 17 November 1937. He is commemorated on 17 November, on 7 February with the synaxis of the new martyrs, and on 5 June with the saints of Rostov and Yaroslavl. He was numbered among the saints in the year 2000.

Alexander Vasilievich Petropavlovsky was born into a noble family; his father had been a collegiate secretary at the Yaroslavl provincial administration. He lost his father early; from childhood he sang in the church choir, which decided his path in life. He finished the town school and entered the Yaroslavl seminary, then served as psalm-⁠reader and deacon in the village of Rybnitsy, forty kilometres from Yaroslavl. In 1929 he was ordained priest, and in the winter of 1930 appointed to the church in the village of Breitovo, to which his family, with four children, moved.

OGPU officers confiscated almost all the family's property, including clothes and bedding; they even took the blanket in which a month-⁠old infant was wrapped. In the house only a stool and a large inherited library remained; they slept on the cold floor, and soon the children fell ill with pneumonia. The doctors refused to treat them, and two children, aged three and six, died at Pascha. Witnesses say that Father Alexander served the Paschal Matins with tears in his eyes. In the mid-⁠thirties he was moved to the church of the Archangel Michael in the village of Prozorovo, where the family also lived in great want and was constantly harassed by the authorities: in Prozorovo they had to change thirteen lodgings.

The father was learned, humble and merciful, ready to give his last possession to those in need. He did not yield to his Communist brother and other relatives, who urged him to give up the priesthood to save his family, but told them: "If we have no clergy, there will be no one to fight for righteousness and purity of human souls, no one to teach the people good and justice, and people will sink into sins and ignorance, lose diligence altogether, no longer love and respect one another, and society will be shaken by evil, fear and implacability. This makes me carry my cross to the end, without thought of the consequences." Foreseeing a martyr's death, he prayed long at night, kneeling before the icons. Several times he was summoned to the NKVD at Breitovo and proposed to become an informer, but he refused resolutely.

In 1937 a case was opened against the priest and he was placed under surveillance. Officials of the village soviet, the local head of the Union of Militant Godless and a teacher signed the slanderous denunciation needed for the arrest. To postpone the arrest, the priest tried to avoid conflicts. When the keys of the belfry were demanded of him so that the bells might be taken down, he handed them over without any resistance. Nevertheless, on 26 October 1937 he was arrested and accused of anti-⁠Soviet agitation and of opposing the lowering of the church bells. The pretext for the arrest was a conversation with the accountant of the village soviet about the excessive tax on the church. Until 6 November he was held in the lockup at Breitovo, then moved to the Rybinsk prison. Although for three weeks he was tortured and beaten, he rejected the charge of counter-⁠revolutionary propaganda and accused no one. He was shot on the sentence of 16 November 1937 and rehabilitated on 16 September 1959.