Arcadius Lobtsov

Holy Hieromartyr Arcadius Lobtsov, a priest, was born on 22 January 1895 in the town of Pereslavl in the Yaroslavl province, in the family of the psalm-⁠reader Ivan Lobtsov. He received the crown of martyrdom by shooting on 17 February 1938 at Butovo, near Moscow. He is commemorated on 17 February, in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo and in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow.

He received his first schooling at the parish school, and in 1909 he finished the clerical school of Pereslavl. For two years he worked as a messenger for a court bailiff. From 1912 he served as a psalm-⁠reader at the church in the village of Zheroslavskoe, in the Kolchugino district of the Vladimir province. In 1919 he was mobilised into the Red Army, where he worked as a clerk. In 1920, on the Polish front, their regiment was interned by the Germans. In July 1921 Arcadius returned home from Germany and again served as a psalm-⁠reader at the same church. In 1922 he was ordained priest for it. From 1929 Father Arcadius served at the church of the Georgian Icon of the Mother of God in the village of Yakshino, in the Lopasnya district of the Moscow region.

In November 1937 agents of the NKVD collected false testimonies, but they arrested Father Arcadius only on 27 January 1938 and imprisoned him at Serpukhov. At the investigation he was asked whether in the German camp in 1920 he had been recruited for the White Army. He answered that White officers had come to the camps to recruit, that some had signed up, but he had not. He said that he had lived in good relations with all the believers, without any special friendships. The inquiry charged him with counter-⁠revolutionary activity among the believers, agitation against the elections to the Supreme Soviet, said to have been conducted in his own home, and with words against the collective farms, spoken in the summer of 1937. The priest denied all of this and refused to declare himself guilty.

On 11 February 1938 the NKVD troika condemned him to death by shooting, and he was taken to the Taganka prison in Moscow. The priest Arcadius Lobtsov was shot on 17 February 1938 and buried in an unknown common grave at the Butovo firing range.