Alexander Vasilyev

Father Alexander Vasilyev was an archpriest and confessor of the tsar's family, and was shot on 5 September 1918 at Petrograd, at the beginning of the Red Terror. Our source does not say that he has been canonized.

He was born into a peasant family in the village of Shepotovo, Smolensk governorate. The educator S. A. Rachinsky received him at the school of Tatevo. On 19 July 1892 he was ordained priest and appointed to Yam-⁠Izhora, near Petersburg. In 1893 he graduated from the Saint Petersburg Theological Academy, with the title of candidate of theology. For eighteen years he served as rector of the church of the Exaltation of the Cross community of nursing sisters and was also there the diocesan supervisor of church schools. He taught religion, and from 1910 began to teach the tsar's children. From 1913 he was archpriest and first rector of the Feodorovsky Sovereign Cathedral at Tsarskoe Selo. In 1914 he was appointed priest of the Great Church of the Winter Palace and became confessor of the tsar's family.

Alexander Petrovich Vasilyev took an active part in the right-⁠wing monarchist movement; in 1910 he was elected to the Main Chamber of the Russian People's Union of the Archangel Michael. He was present at the opening of the Petrograd conference of monarchists on 21 to 23 November 1915. He was also an active participant in the temperance movement, of a markedly patriotic character.

In September 1916 his son, an officer of the Pavlovsky regiment, was killed at the front. Then, out of sympathy for the father's grief, the empress Alexandra Feodorovna offered to transfer his other sons from combat units to the rear, but Father Alexander refused. He served a molieben for the journey at the departure of the Royal Passion-⁠Bearers into Siberian exile. In 1918 he was appointed rector of the church of the Great Martyr Catherine at Ekaterinhof. He was arrested on 29 August 1918 at Petrograd and on 5 September was shot, at the start of the Red Terror, together with the clergy of the church of Saint Catherine.