Alexis Nikologorsky

Holy Hieromartyr Alexis Nikologorsky, a protopriest, was born in 1869 in the village of Nagornoe, in the Dmitrov district of the Moscow province, in the family of the psalm-⁠reader Simeon Nikologorsky. He was shot on 27 November 1937, after forty-⁠seven years of priestly service. The Russian Church honours him among the New Martyrs and Confessors.

In 1889 he finished the seminary and was ordained priest at the church in the village of Volochanovo, in the Volokolamsk district. In twenty-⁠seven years of service he received many awards for flawless service and zeal; he was inspector of the church schools of the district, dean and investigator of spiritual affairs at the consistory. At Volochanovo he met the persecution of the godless.

In 1930 the authorities took all his belongings and demanded a large tax. Since he could not pay it, the court sentenced him to two years in a labour camp. The charge and sentence were unjust, and in prison he asked for a review of the case; the sentence was cancelled, and after three months he was released. It was probably at Volokolamsk that he came to know Saint Archbishop Thaddeus, who lived for a time in a village there after returning from exile. So, on leaving prison, he went to the diocese of Tver, then governed by that hierarch, and received a place at the church of Saints Cosmas and Damian in the village of Plotnikovo, in the Rzhev district. His wife had died, his six children had grown up and left, and only his daughter Alexandra, twenty-⁠seven, lived with him. In 1937 the protopriest marked there the forty-⁠seventh anniversary of his priestly service.

On 24 October 1937 he was arrested and imprisoned at Rzhev. The investigator asked about his property before and after the revolution, noted his long service, his awards and his church offices, but found nothing criminal, so he tried to frighten him. The priest answered: "I carried on no anti-⁠Soviet activity among the population and cannot admit guilt. As a servant devoted to my work, I often gave sermons in which I touched only on the true Orthodox faith, with nothing anti-⁠Soviet." On 25 November the NKVD troika sentenced him to death, and Protopriest Alexis Nikologorsky was shot on 27 November 1937. He is commemorated on 27 November, on 7 February, in the Synaxis of the Saints of Tver, on 18 July, and in the Synaxis of the Moscow Saints.