Alexander Zaozersky

Holy Hieromartyr Alexander Zaozersky was an archpriest in Moscow. He was born on 20 July 1879 and shot on 26 May 1922, in the years of persecution after the revolution. The Russian Church numbered him among the saints in 2000, for veneration throughout the Church. His feast is on 13 May (26 May by the new calendar) and in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia.

He was born in Moscow into the family of the priest Nikolai Pavlovich Zaozersky, who served at the church of Saints Peter and Paul in the Mariinsky hospital. He studied at the Zaikonospassky ecclesiastical school, graduated from the Moscow Theological Seminary in 1899 and from the Moscow Theological Academy in 1903, with the degree of candidate in theology.

In 1903 Metropolitan Vladimir of Moscow appointed him psalm-⁠reader at the church of the Holy Trinity on the Arbat. In 1908 he was ordained priest for the Devyatinskaya church at Presnya. In 1909 he was transferred to the church of Saint Alexander Nevsky at the Meshchansky schools and almshouse. When the authorities closed that church in 1919, he was assigned to the church of Saint Paraskeva Friday at Okhotny Ryad, where he served until his martyric death. In 1920 he was raised to the rank of archpriest.

For many years, from 1908 to 1918, he taught religion in secondary and parish schools. From 1914 to 1916 he lectured on dogmatic theology and led practical exercises in preaching at the Moscow pastoral courses, and from 1914 to 1918 he taught homiletics at the Moscow Theological Seminary.

On 8 April 1922 he was arrested in the case of the so-⁠called confiscation of church valuables, together with Archpriests Vasily Sokolov, Christopher Nadezhdin, Hieromonk Macarius Telegin and Sergius Tikhomirov. At the interrogation he did not admit guilt. He told how he had attended a meeting in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, where Archbishop Nikander had spoken about church discipline and read the decree and instruction of the Central Executive Committee on the seizure of church valuables, as well as the epistle of Patriarch Tikhon.

He said that he had sent the Patriarch's epistle to the churches as his duty of office and in obedience to the higher church authorities, and had read it also in his own parish church. He declared that he agreed with it and considered it religious, not counter-⁠revolutionary.

He was shot on 26 May 1922 and buried at the Kalitniki cemetery in Moscow.

In 1998 he was glorified as a locally venerated saint of the Moscow diocese. At the Jubilee Council of Bishops of 13 to 16 August 2000 in Moscow, he was numbered among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, for veneration in the whole Church.