Basil Mirozhin

Holy Hieromartyr Basil Mirozhin, a priest, was born on 5 March 1865 in the village of Goryainovo, Ryazan district and province, in the family of the psalm-⁠reader John Mirozhin. After the Ryazan seminary he did not go the spiritual way but served as an official in the excise department, and only after the Revolution, when the persecution began, did he ask to become a priest, was ordained, and served at the Annunciation church in Zaraisk. He was made archpriest. He was a fervent preacher, which was later held against him, and two summaries of his sermons survive, among them one on "Come to Me, all you who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest": Christ wished His hearers to be calmed, not to fear the future, not to be crushed by the past and the present, but to turn to Him, and for that reason the Gospel is the book that calms more than any other.

Witnesses in 1937 said that he carried on counter-⁠revolutionary propaganda among women, urging the daughter of a priest, a typist at a factory, to draw people to church, and that when the factory workers asked for the closing of the church beside it, he told the director that the faithful would not allow it to be closed and defiled and that he must struggle for God's work to the end. He was arrested on 5 September 1937, held in Kolomna and interrogated that very day. He admitted preaching in church but denied anti-⁠Soviet propaganda: his sermons were consoling and urged belief in God. On 11 November 1937 an NKVD troika sentenced him to ten years in a camp. He was sent to Vladivostok, to the Dallag camp, then to Siblag, where he arrived on 9 January 1938 at the Suslovo section. Archpriest Basil Mirozhin died on 20 December 1941 at the Mariinsk transit point in Kemerovo region and was buried in an unknown grave.

He is commemorated on 20 December (7 December, old style), on 7 February (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church, on 29 August (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Kuzbass, and on 5 September (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow, all in the new style.