Basil Ozeretskovsky

Holy Hieromartyr Basil Ozeretskovsky, a priest, was born on 31 December 1885 in the village of Lobanovo, Moscow district, in the family of the priest John Ozeretskovsky. He studied at the Moscow seminary. From 1904 he was psalm-⁠reader at the Protection cathedral in Moscow and teacher at the parish school of the church of the Conception, and from 1908 psalm-⁠reader at the church of the Protection in the village of Lokotnya, Zvenigorod district. In 1915 he was sent to the church of the Nativity of the Mother of God in the village of Rudnevo, Vereya district.

In 1920 he was ordained deacon, and in the same year priest, for the church of the Smolensk Icon of the Mother of God in the village of Ryzhkovo near Naro-⁠Fominsk. In 1921 he was moved to the church of the Holy Apostle and Evangelist John the Theologian in the village of Irininskoe, Podolsk district. From the early 1930s until his arrest in 1937 he served at the church of the Nativity of the Mother of God in the village of Ivano-⁠Teremets, Mikhnevo district.

On 5 October 1937 he was arrested and held at Kashira, on a charge of "spreading counter-⁠revolutionary slander about the leaders of the party and Soviet power and of actively training collective farmers in a religious spirit". He did not admit guilt. On 17 October 1937 an NKVD troika sentenced him to death, and the priest Basil Ozeretskovsky was shot on 21 October 1937 and buried in an unknown common grave at the Butovo firing range near Moscow.

He is commemorated on 21 October, on 29 May (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the New Martyrs of Butovo, and on 5 September (a movable date) in the Synaxis of the Saints of Moscow, all in the new style.